TWENTY-FIVE   SERMONS 


OF 


TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS 


WILLIAM  J.  POTTER. 


*-4L 


BOSTON: 

Geo.  H.  Ellis,  141  Franklin  Street. 

l88q. 


Copyright, 

i88j, 

By  William  J.  Potter. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Prefatory  Letter    v 

I.    Apostolic  Succession i 

II.    The  Soul's  Rest 20 

III.  God  in  Nature «    •     •  32 

IV.  Mercy  and  Judgment 48 

V.    Self-sacrifice 56 

VI.    The  Religion  of  the  Affections  ....  71 

VII.     Endurance  .    .     .     .- •  88 

VIII.     Childhood's      Instinct     and     Manhood's 

Faith i°3 

IX.     Pure  Religion 116 

X.     Christmas  Legend  and  Fact 130 

XI.    The   Eden  of  the  Senses  and  the  Eden 

of  the  Soul 143 

XII.    Thoughts  and  Conduct 158 

XIII.  Easter  Truths  and  Traditions     ....  171 

XIV.  Optimism 189 

XV.     Mutual  Social  Responsibility 204 

XVI.     Heart  in  Nature '  .    .  224 


iv  CONTENTS 

XVII.  Waiting  for  One's  Self 240 

XVIII.  The  Silent  Revelation 256 

XIX.  The  Religion  of  Humanity 271 

XX.  What  do  We  Worship  ? 288 

XXI.  God  in  Humanity 3°4 

XXII.  The  Permanence  of  Morality       .    .     .     .  323 

XXIII.  The  Practicality  of  Thought 340 

XXIV.  The  Glorious  God 355 

XXV.  A  Twenty-five  Years'  Ministry     ....  376 

Appendix 401 


PREFATORY    LETTER. 


Dear  Friends  and  Parishioners  : 

For  more  than  two  years,  I  had  cherished  the 
thought  that,  if  I  should  remain  your  minister 
twenty-five  years,  I  would  print  a  volume  of  dis- 
courses selected  from  those  years,  and  have.it  ready 
as  a  surprise  gift  to  you  on  the  twenty-fifth  anniver- 
sary. But  the  pressure  of  ordinary  work  delayed 
my  entering  on  the  execution  of  this  purpose  until 
last  summer's  vacation  ;  and  then  I  found  that  the 
task  of  preparing  and  getting  through  the  press 
such  a  book  was  too  great  for  the  limited  time  at 
command.  The  anniversary  came,  and  only  a  begin- 
ning had' been  made.  In  an  unguarded  moment,  I 
expressed  to  one  of  you  my  disappointment  at  not 
having  completed  this  intention  ;  and  thus  I  let  out 
my  secret.  From  that  time,  the  purpose  became 
yours ;  and  you  now  make  the  gift  to  yourselves. 
You  asked  and  urged  me  to  put  the  thought  into 
action,  and  made  it  easier  to  do  so  ;  and  you,  espe- 
cially, are  responsible  for  the  frontispiece  and  Ap- 


VI  PREFATORY    LETTER 

pendix  to  the  volume,  which  formed  no  part  of  my 
plan.  I  have  only  selected  and  arranged  for  you  the 
discourses  and  seen  the  book  through  the  press. 

This  book,  therefore,  has  been  made  chiefly  for 
your  eyes.  It  may  be  regarded  as,  in  a  sense,  a 
memorial  record  of  our  twenty-five  years  of  parish 
life  together.  With  this  end  in  view,  it  contains  the 
first  and  the  last  discourse  of  the  quarter-century, 
and,  with  one  exception,  one  from  each  of  the  suc- 
cessive years  between,  in  chronological  order.  For 
one  twelvemonth,  though  still  your  minister,  my 
ministry  was  in  soldiers'  hospitals  and  near  battle- 
fields. As  that  twelvemonth  did  not  entirely  syn- 
chronize with  the  calendar  year,  I  might  have  found 
some  sermon  with  the  date  1864  attached  to  it ;  but 
I  came  across  nothing  which  it  seemed  worth  while 
to  print.  I  had  left  some  of  my  physical  vigor  in 
Virginia,  and  it  took  several  months  to  recover 
mental  elasticity.  This  plan  of  selecting  the  ser- 
mons from  the  whole  period  of  the  twenty-five  years 
is  one,  I  am  well  aware,  which  involves  a  risk.  Pos- 
sibly, it  involves  some  moral  risk  to  assume  that 
anything  I  wrote  in  the  earliest  part  of  my  ministry 
can  be  worthy  of  preservation.  But  there  is  also  a 
risk  that  the  plan  may  cause  some  misunderstanding 
in  regard  to  my  present  intellectual  beliefs.  As 
explained  in  the  anniversary  discourse, —  the  last  in 
the  book, —  my  views  have  undergone  considerable 


PREFATORY    LETTER  Vll 

change  in  this  period.  Hence  there  are  among  my 
earlier  discourses  many  which  I  could  not  write  in 
just  the  same  way  to-day ;  and  some  of  those  chosen 
for  this  volume  come,  in  a  measure,  under  this  class. 
I  have  chosen  none,  however,  the  main  lesson  of 
which  I  should  not  still  stand  by  and  hold  impor- 
tant ;  and,  if  certain  incongruities  in  respect  to  sub- 
ordinate ideas  and  phraseology  may  appear  between 
the  earlier  and  later  discourses,  they  are  a  part  of  the 
record  of  my  ministry  which  I  have  no  wish  to  con- 
ceal, and  which  may  have,  indeed,  a  certain  interest 
and  value. 

With  one  exception,  I  have  allowed  myself  to 
change  only  verbal  infelicities ;  and  that  exception 
seems  to  me  of  sufficient  importance  specially  to 
note.  The  discourse  on  "The  Religion  of  the  Af- 
fections," numbered  VI.,  was  quite  recently  repeated, 
and  was  included  in  the  volume  by  the  request  of  a 
number  of  persons  who  then  heard  it.  At  the  repe- 
tition, I  inserted  a  modifying,  cautionary  clause  on 
introducing  the  argument  from  the  doctrine  of  im- 
mortality ;  and  this  I  have  permitted  to  stand  in  the 
sermon,  which  is  otherwise  printed  substantially  as 
first  delivered  in  1865.  The  discourses  are,  for  the 
most  part,  dated  at  the  time  of  their  first  or  only 
delivery  in  our  own  church.  In  two  or  three  cases, 
where  they  had  been  to  a  considerable  extent  rewrit- 
ten, the    date  when    they  were  given   in  their  new 


viii  PREFATORY    LETTER 

form  is  attached ;  as,  for  instance,  number  XXI. 
was  delivered  in  several  places  and  several  years 
before  the  date  here  assigned  it,  when  it  appeared 
in  revised  form.  In  the  anniversary  sermon,  one 
quite  important  paragraph,  accidentally  omitted  in 
the  delivery,  has  been  inserted.  As  you  know,  I 
have  not  in  late  years  held  to  the  custom  of  taking 
texts,  either  from  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  Script- 
ures or  elsewhere.  My  habit  is  to  use  a  text, 
from  whatever  source,  only  when  the  text  actually 
suggests  the  sermon.  But  sometimes  I  have  writ- 
ten a  quotation  as  a  motto  at  the  head  of  a  sermon, 
without  referring  to  it  in  the  delivery ;  and  in  a  few 
instances,  for  the  sake  of  uniformity,  I  have  prefixed 
such  mottoes  to  sermons  chosen  for  the  volume, 
where  they  were  wanting. 

Had  I  been  called  to  select  a  volume  of  discourses 
for  the  general  public,  I  should  have  chosen  such  as 
would  have  a  more  logical  connection  on  some  one 
line  of  thought.  But  for  you,  as  a  memorial  volume 
of  these  years  during  which  we  have  lived  and 
worked  together,  I  have  judged  that  a  more  miscel- 
laneous selection,  as  regards  topics,  would  be  more 
acceptable  and  useful.  Selecting  thus  from  the 
wide  variety  of  subjects  which  have  engaged  our 
thoughts  in  the  Sunday  service,  I  have  had,  however, 
two  leading  aims  :  first,  to  choose  those  discourses 
that   seemed  to  touch  most  closely  the  permanent 


PREFATORY    LETTER  IX 

problems  of  moral  and  religious  life;  and,  second, 
to  choose  those  that  attempted  to  throw  some  light 
on  the  specially  perplexing  problems  of  modern 
religious  thought.  With  the  hope  that  these  ser- 
mons, thus  chosen,  which,  as  a  congregation,  you 
have  listened  to  from  the  pulpit,  may  now  be  a  help 
to  some  of  you  in  the  nearer  companionship  of  your 
homes,  I  respond  to  your  kindly  expressed  wish,  and 
put  them  into  your  hands. 

Sincerely  your  friend, 

Wm.  J.  Potter. 

New  Bedford,  May  i,  1SS5. 


SURE  the  dumb  earth  hath  memory,  nor  for  naught 
Was  Fancy  given,  on  whose  enchanted  loom 
Present  and  Past  commingle,  fruit  and  bloom 
Of  one  fair  bough,  inseparably  wrought 
Into  the  seamless  tapestry  of  thought. 
So  charmed,  with  undeluded  eye  we  see 
In  history's  fragmentary  tale  t 

Bright  clews  of  continuity, 
Learn  that  high  natures  over  Time  prevail, 
And  feel  ourselves  a  link  in  that  entail 
That  binds  all  ages  past  with  all  that  are  to  be. 

James  Russell  Lowell. 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION. 

"  Other  men  labored,  and  ye  are  entered  into  their  labors." — 
John  iv.,  38. 

"  Therefore,  seeing  we  have  this  ministry,  as  we  have  received 
mercy,  we  faint  not." — II.  Cor.  iv.,  1. 

As  I  recall  the  succession  of  able  men  who  with 
eloquent  lips  and  earnest  hearts  have  ministered  to 
the  spiritual  wants  of  this  Society,  in  the  privacy  of 
your  homes  and  from  this  desk,  and  into  whose 
labors  among  you,  responsive  to  your  call,  I  this  day 
enter,  my  heart  trembles  with  conflicting  emotions 
of  fear  and  hope  :  of  fear,  lest  I  shall  wear  but  un- 
worthily the  pastoral  mantle  now  fallen  upon  me 
from  these  past  prophets  and  only  demean  offices 
hallowed  to  your  hearts  by  so  many  memories  ;  of 
hope,  when  I  think  of  the  warm  hands  with  which 
you  have  welcomed  me  here  to  begin  my  life's  work, 
so  near  the  scenes  among  which  began  my  life. 
Ay,  I  am  tremulous  with  joyous  pride,  when  I  re- 
member the  nature  of  the  work  info  whose  lone; 
succession  of  laborers  you  have  now  admitted  me, 
and  see  that  this  day  the  dream  of  my  life  is 
fulfilled.  Confirmed  by  this  realization  of  my  child- 
hood's hopes,  inspired  by  a  conviction  of  the  worthi- 
ness of   the  office  before   me,  and    reading  in   the 


2  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

unanimity  of  your  invitation  and  in  the  ready  con- 
sent you  have  given  to  my  requests  for  certain 
changes  in  some  of  your  forms  of  service  that  you 
will  freely  and  candidly  listen  to  my  thought,  though 
it  may  not  always  agree  with  your  own,  and  not  be 
swift  to  censure  deficiencies  which  must  become 
apparent  to  you  from  a  closer  intercourse,  I  am 
emboldened  to  say  with  Paul,  "  Having  therefore  this 
ministry,  as  I  have  received  mercy,  I  faint  not." 

Into  the  lengthening  succession  of  the  ministry, 
then,  I  now  enter,  and  to  its  holy  offices,  under  the 
blessing  of  God,  here  consecrate  my  powers.  And 
the  thoughts  which  the  occasion  presses  upon  me 
group  themselves  naturally  around  this  topic, —  the 
true  doctrine  of  Apostolic  Succession. 

You  know  the  old  doctrine  that  goes  by  this 
name,  which  asserts  that  no  ministry  is  valid  unless 
it  can  be  traced  back,  by  the  successive  laying  on 
of  priestly  hands,  to  the  grace  which  Jesus  himself 
communicated  when  he  commissioned  the  first  apos- 
tles. According  to  this  view,  the  Holy  Spirit  can 
flow  only  through  certain  ecclesiastical  channels, 
and  spiritual  validity  is  made  dependent  on  physical 
manipulations.  The  minister  does  not  go  immedi- 
ately and  for  himself  to  the  fountain  of  grace  which 
gives  worth  and  spiritual  life  to  his  ministrations ; 
but  —  standing  at  the  end  of  this  long  conduit, 
reaching  back  through  all  the  ramifications  and  dis- 
turbances of  ecclesiastical  history  for  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  —  he  is  dependent  for  such  supplies  as 
tradition  may  have  saved  for  him  from  a  past  age 
through  the  hands  of  pope  and  prelate.     The  Script- 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION 


ures,  interpreted  by  the  traditions  and  official  voice 
of  the  Church, —  this  is  the  channel,  and  this  only, 
through  which  his  spirit  may  receive  divine  truth. 
And  when  we  remember  the  worthless  character  of 
not  a  few  of  those  who  have  stood  in  this  priestly 
line  of  succession,  and  see  through  what  gross  and 
sordid  hands  this  legacy  of  truth  has  sometimes  had 
to  pass ;  and  when  we  think  with  what  rubbish  and 
corruption  the  channel  of  ecclesiastical  history  has 
been  clogged  and  befouled, —  is  it  strange  that  those 
who  trust  to  this  resource  for  their  supplies  of  grace 
should  often  find  them  both  scanty  and  stale  ?  What 
wonder  if  they  should  sometimes  discover  that  what 
they  had  taken  for  aqueducts  of  pure  water  should 
turn  out  to  be  offensive  sewers,  bringing  down  the 
filth  and  poison  of  effete  centuries  ! 

But  this  view,  though  its  shadow  linger  yet  in 
several  of  the  Protestant  sects,  is  distinctly  declared 
and  maintained  as  a  dogma  only  by  the  Roman 
Catholics  and  the  High  Church  party  of  the  Epis- 
copal denomination,  and  need  not  detain  us  longer. 
The  fact  of  the  Reformation  and  the  consequent 
springing  up  of  new  sects,  and  often  under  the  lead- 
ership of  teachers  on  whom  no  priestly  hands  had 
been  laid  in  consecration,  necessitated  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  doctrine  that  ministerial  grace  is  trans- 
mitted from  the  first  apostles  through  an  unbroken 
chain  of  physical  communication,  and  gave  rise'  to 
the  second  form  of  the  doctrine  of  Apostolic  Suc- 
cession, which,  for  sake  of  distinction,  though  not 
held  very  strictly  by  all  the  Protestant  sects,  yet 
found  to  some  extent  in  all  or  nearly  all,  I  shall  call 
the  Protestant  view  of  the  doctrine. 


4  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

According  to  this  view,  it  is  not  necessary,  in 
order  to  validate  the  ministerial  office,  that  the  lay- 
ing on  of  priestly  hands  should  have  been  maintained 
in  unbroken  succession  from  the  first  apostles.  The 
impossibility  of  tracing  such  a  genealogy  through 
the  confused  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the 
meagre  annals  of  the  first  centuries  of  the  Church, 
if  there  were  no  other  objections,  is  deemed  a  suffi- 
cient argument  against  the  claim.  But  the  real  suc- 
cession and  validity,  it  is  maintained,  are  spiritual ; 
and  the  laying  on  of  hands  is  only  emblematic  of 
grace  already  possessed,  or,  at  best,  is  only  a  form 
of  giving  ecclesiastical  validity,  not  substantial  and 
spiritual  qualifications.  And  this  were  all  clear  and 
rational,  if  it  were  only  the  real  doctrine  held  ;  that 
is,  if  the  doctrine,  as  it  is  really  held,  were  what  the 
plain  sense  of  these  words  indicates.  But,  in  point 
of  fact,  there  is  hardly  a  Protestant  sect  that  does 
not  practically  reproduce,  with  more  or  less  strict- 
ness, in  its  own  limits  the  Roman  Catholic  idea  of 
validity.  It  is  not  necessary,  indeed,  for  the  Prot- 
estant preacher's  validity  that  he  should  have  re- 
ceived grace  through  the  unbroken  priestly  order  of 
the  Church  from  the  original  apostles ;  but  it  is 
deemed  necessary  that  he  should  have  received  it 
from  hands  of  his  own  faith.  The  Calvinist  minister 
needs  not,  in  order  to  prove  his  legitimacy,  to  show 
that  the  hands  which  were  laid  upon  him  received 
grace  from  some  prelate's  hands,  which  were  made 
gracious  by  some  previous  prelate's  hands,  and  so 
on  back  to  the  original  grace  in  Galilee;  but  he 
must  show  that  the  hands  of  Calvinists  have  been 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  5 

laid  upon  him.  Should  it  be  said  that  this  form  is 
only  emblematic  of  approbation  and  fellowship  on 
points  of  doctrine,  I  reply  that  the  fancied  explana- 
tion points  to  the  very  root  of  the  error  and,  instead 
of  refuting  my  statement,  proves  it ;  for  it  shows  that 
the  substantial  and  spiritual  qualifications  —  of  the 
possession  of  which,  it  is  said,  the  form  of  ordination 
is  only  symbolic  —  must  have  come  through  certain 
channels  and  have  a  certain  church  stamp  upon 
them.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  individual  societies, 
there  is  no  sect — no,  not  even  the  most  liberal — ■ 
that  dares  to  trust  a  minister  freely  with  the  Divine 
Spirit.  He  must  have  that  Spirit,  indeed ;  but  he 
cannot  breathe  it  in  like  the  free  air  of  heaven  by 
contact  with  his  own  lungs.  He  must  have  it  meas- 
ured out  for  him  by  prescription  of  some  theological 
authority,  and  inhale  it  artificially  through  the  sponge 
of  a  creed.  It  is  not  the  Divine  Spirit  coming  to 
him  and  showing  him  truth,  but  that  Spirit  as  it 
once  came  to  Luther  or  Calvin  or  Swedenborg  or 
Wesley  or  Fox ;  and  if,  perchance,  it  should  come 
to  him  with  some  word  not  told  to  them,  and  he 
should  use  his  freedom  to  utter  it,  most  likely  he 
will  be  disfellowshipped  and  excommunicated  there- 
for. And  so  essentially  there  is  no  difference  be- 
tween the  Catholic  and  the  common  Protestant 
doctrine  of  ministerial  succession.  The  papal  priest 
succeeds  to  apostolic  grace  and  truth  by  hereditary 
descent  from  the  first  apostles.  The  Protestant 
minister  succeeds  to  the  apostolic  inheritance  by 
tradition  from  the  founder,  or  founders,  of  his  spe- 
cial sect.     The  only  difference  is  that  the  Protestant 


6  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

thinks  that  the  line  of  hereditary  descent  from  the 
first  apostles  has  been  broken,  so  that  corruptions 
entered  the  Church,  and  that  this  failure  has  been 
mended   by  the  truth   having  been  reshown  to  the 
founders  of   his  own  sect.     But    both    the  Catholic 
and  Protestant  parties  agree  that  of  religious  truth, 
at  least  for  this  world,  there  has  been  a  final  revela- 
tion ;  and  each  of  these  two  great  bodies,  as  well  as 
each  of  the  numerous  smaller  Protestant  sects, —  with' 
hardly  a  complete  exception, —  claims  that    its  own 
interpretation  of  that  revelation  is  a  finality,  so  that 
a  new  minister  only  succeeds  to  the  old  office  of  ex- 
pounding   Scriptural    truth    according    to  the    creed 
and  commentaries  of  his  own  faith,  travelling  over 
the  same  road  trodden   by  his    predecessors    for,  it 
may  be,  hundreds    of   years ;    while    those  who  put 
themselves  above  the  Scriptures,  and  claim  the  con- 
tinuance  and  efficacy  of  the  same  revealing  Spirit 
which  manifested  itself  in   them,  are  denounced  as 
heretics    and   infidels.     The    sect    that    still    claims 
the  present  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as   above 
Scripture — that     of    the     Society    of    Friends,     or 
Quakers  —  makes,  at  least  in  its  largest  section,  no 
proper  exception  to  this  judgment;  for  it  practically 
neutralizes  the  doctrine  by  making  the  authenticity 
of  the  living  spoken  Word  of  to-day  depend  upon 
agreement  with  the  literal  written  words  of  eighteen 
centuries  ago.     And  so  there  is  succession,  but  no 
advancement.     Churches    are  built,  decay,  and   are 
succeeded  by  others,  generation  after  generation  of 
priests   passes  away,  and  yet  there  is  no  progress, 
no  going  beyond  the  creed  of  the  fathers,  no  getting 
out  of  the  catechism. 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  J 

Notiee  that  I  am  here  stating  the  principle  on 
which  the  sects  stand  rather  than  actual  facts  with 
regard  to  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  not  even  the 
strictest  sect,  I  believe,  is  able  to  resist  the  gen- 
eral current  of  progress,  which  is  shown,  however, 
rather  by  a  prudent  silence  on  some  of  their  most 
discreditable  articles  of  faith  than  by  boldly  expung- 
ing them  from  the  creed.  In  principle,  however, 
no  progress  can  be  admitted.  The  Orthodox  must 
hold  to  Calvin  or  Edwards,  the  Methodist  must  not 
depart  from  Wesley,  the  Quaker  cannot  go  beyond 
Fox  and  Barclay ;  and  even  in  our  own  free  denomi- 
nation there  are  many  who  would  draw  lines  each 
side  of  Channing,  to  pass  over  which  in  either  direc- 
tion should  be  deemed  sufficient  cause  for  non- 
fellowship.  So  that,  with  the  partial  exception  of 
Liberal  Christians,  whatever  advancement  the  sects 
make  in  religious  truth  is  made  not  in  consequence 
but  in  spite  of  their  principles.  And  this  advance- 
ment of  particular  sects,  in  spite  of  their  creeds  and 
their  own  efforts,  is  the  result  of  a  general  move- 
ment in  the  knowledge  of  truth  by  which  the  whole 
civilized  world  is  going  forward  :  which  brings  us  to 
the  third  view  under  our  topic, —  the  true  and  philo- 
sophic order  of  Apostolic  Succession  and  ministerial 
validity.     Let  us  distinguish  the  points  carefully. 

i.  That  is  a  narrow  conception  of  revelation,  and, 
as  I  believe,  unsupported  both  by  enlightened  views 
of  the  nature  of  God  and  by  the  history  of  the  relig- 
ious development  of  man,  which  maintains  that  in 
religious  truth  there  is  no  progress, —  that  the  Chris- 
tian of  to-day  has  no  better  ideas  of  God  and  man 


8  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

and  the  relation  between  them  than  the  Christian  of 
eighteen  centuries  ago.  It  would  indeed  be  strange 
if,  while  science  and  art  and  philosophy  are  pro- 
gressive, religion  —  which  embraces  them  all,'  the 
science,  art,  and  philosophy  of  life  —  should  stand 
still,  and  have  no  new  word  for  eighteen  hundred 
years.  Nor  does  the  history  of  Christianity  bring 
us  to  any  such  singular  result.  So  far  as  Chris- 
tianity is  a  revelation  of  God,  it  is  so,  not  because 
it  laid  down  a  platform  of  doctrines  and  put  a  finality 
to  all  religious  thought  and  inquiry,  but  because  it 
entered  the  world  as  a  vitalizing,  organizing  power, 
bringing  truth  gradually  to  light  and  building  up 
society  according  to  its  dictates.  Truth,  indeed,  is 
one,  absolute,  eternal,  infinite.  But,  for  this  very 
reason,  the  revelation  of  religious  truth,  as  of  all 
other  truth,  to  a  finite,  progressive  being  must  be 
always  gradual,  partial,  and  progressive.  The  case 
would  not  be  altered  by  the  supposition  that  the 
revelation  of  religious  truth  is  through  supernatural 
means  and  at  special  seasons.  For  even  though  the 
Creator,  by  methods  above  the  ordinary  laws  of 
spiritual  influence,  should  have  so  acted  upon  a  few 
minds,  the  writers  of  the  Bible,  that  they  saw  and 
uttered  truths  which  otherwise  they  would  not  have 
seen,  yet  the  minds  of  other  persons  —  that  is,  of  the 
world  at  large  —  could  not  see  and  comprehend  these 
truths  until  elevated  to  the  same  condition  of  seeing, 
which  must  occur  either  suddenly  by  supernatural 
agency  or  gradually  by  natural  growth  and  develop- 
ment ;  and,  as  the  former  process  is  not  claimed  by 
the  hypothesis  except  in  the  case  of  those  to  whom 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  9 

the  truth  was  first  shown,  it  follows  that  to  the 
world  at  large  the  revelation  must  be  gradual  and 
progressive.  And,  moreover,  this  must  be  so  from 
the  very  nature  of  the  mind  itself.  Our  powers  are 
not  given  us  in  full  maturity,  but  as  germs  to  be 
developed,  we  know  not  to  what  destined  end.  To 
this  law  of  growth,  the  religious  faculty,  including 
religious  perception  as  well  as  sentiment,  is  certainly 
no  exception  :  else,  why  all  this  organizing  of  means, 
of  preaching  and  prayer  and  missions,  to  make  men 
more  rationally  religious  ?  The  elevation  of  the 
soul,  the  enlargement  and  quickening  of  the  truth- 
seeing  faculty  within  us,  is,  in  fact,  the  test  of  the 
growth  of  character.  And  as  not  even  Omnipo- 
tence can  make  the  blind  see  without  first^opening 
their  eyes,  so  he  cannot  reveal  truth  to  the  soul 
unless  the  soul  be  first  opened  to  receive  it  ;  and  as 
the  soul,  in  the  natural  order,  opens  by  gradual 
development,  so  the  revelation  must  be  gradual  and 
progressive.  What  is  true  of  the  individual  is  also 
true  of  the  race,  since  the  race  advances  only 
through  the  progress  of  individuals.  Religious 
truth,  then,  in  process  of  revelation  to  the  world, 
must  be  progressive. 

2.  What  are  the  agencies  through  which  this 
revelation  is  effected  ?  First  and  foremost  is  the 
Divine  Spirit,  the  source  or  vital  atmosphere  of  the 
truth  itself  which  is  to  be  revealed.  This  is 
the  primary  and  permanent  agency  acting  through 
and  above  all  others.  It  is  Infinite  Being  revealing 
itself,  Absolute  and  Infinite  Truth  making  its  way 
into   finite,    individual    consciousness.     The    Divine 


10  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

Spirit  is  only  a  form  of  conception  for  God.  It  is 
God  going  forth,  as  it  were,  from  himself, —  the 
Eternal  Word  issuing  from  Absolute,  Unchangeable 
Beins:,  and  seeking  incarnation  and  articulation  in 
finite,  personal  form.  This  Eternal  Word  carries 
truth  with  it,  by  virtue  of  its  very  nature  ;  for  truth 
is  its  life  and  substance.  This  is  that  "Wisdom" 
which  "in  all  ages,  entering  into  holy  souls,  maketh 
them  friends  of  God  and  prophets."  In  every  finite 
soul,  then,  in  which  this  Word  comes  to  conscious- 
ness, and  just  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  that 
consciousness,  is  truth  revealed. 

And  so  the  finite  soul  becomes  a  second  and  sub- 
agency  in  the  revelation  of  truth.  For  though  in 
every  human  being  there  is  planted,  as  its  vital 
organic  principle,  a  germ  of  this  eternal  substance 
of  the  Divine  Spirit,  which  will  develop,  as  the 
faculties  open,  into  religious  principles  and  char- 
acter, yet,  as  in  science  and  art  and  every  department 
of  knowledge  there  have  always  been  individuals 
who  have  seen  farther  than  the  mass  of  men,  and 
have  therefore  been  special  instructors  in  their 
respective  branches  of  knowledge,  so  in  all  ages 
have  men  appeared  in  whom  the  religious  conscious- 
ness has  been  so  elevated  that  they  have  seen 
farther  than  mankind  in  general  into  the  secrets  of 
religious  truth,  and  become  its  special  revealers  to 
the  world.  These  are  the  Spirit's  witnesses,  through 
whom  the  higher  truths  of  religion  are  confirmed, 
if  not  announced,  to  humanity  at  large.  They  stand 
along  the  course  of  history  as  the  guides  of  the  race, 
as  the  prophets  of  human  destiny.     Their  souls  are 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  I  I 

the  reflectors  of  divine  truth,  so  placed  that  they 
throw  the  rays  upon  the  common  human  heart,  and 
start  into  life  and  organic  form  the  germs  of  truth 
before  lying  latent  there.  Through  these  prophetic 
souls,  the  common  religious  consciousness  of  the 
race  is  quickened  to  greater  activity  and  elevated 
to  a  higher  point  of  vision  and  a  more  extended 
spiritual  horizon.  And,  then,  as  out  of  this  elevated 
religious  consciousness  a  new  generation  is  born,  so 
the  prophets  of  this  newer  generation  — even  if,  their 
feet  standing  on  this  higher  plane,  they  do  not  see 
farther  into  the  mysteries  of  truth  than  their  prede- 
cessors—  will  at  least  have  a  better  vantage-ground 
from  which,  with  the  truth  they  do  see,  they  can 
act  practically  upon  the  world.  And  thus  the  com- 
mon religious  consciousness  of  the  race  is  elevated 
to  still  higher  reach  ;  and  this  elevation,  in  its  turn, 
becomes  a  new  stage  by  which  succeeding  prophets 
shali  rise  to  yet  larger  vision,  and  make  to  the 
underlying  world  still  broader*  revelations  of  Infinite 
Wisdom.  As  scientific  men  take  up  their  respec 
tive  sciences  where  they  were  left  by  the  preceding 
generation,  and  so  go  on  from  these  results  to  fresh 
discoveries  and  new  generalizations,  so  each  gen- 
eration of  religious  teachers,  standing  on  the  ground 
won  by  the  preceding  age,  should  attain  to  broader 
views  and  help  build  to  more  perfect  completion  the 
temple  of  religious  truth.  And  this  is  the  true 
divine  order  of  Apostolic  Succession. 

3.  If  we  would  follow  the  line  of  this  succession, 
we  must  get  above  denominational  distinctions  and 
take  a  broad  philosophic  view  of  religious  develop- 


12  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

merit,  not  merely  within  the  limits  of  sects,  but  in 
the  production  of  sects.  We  shall  then  see  that  the 
true  Apostolic  Succession  does  not  lie  within  de- 
nominational boundaries,  but  overleaps  them,  and 
that,  in  the  race  of  true  prophets,  validity  is  proved 
rather  by  departure  from  than  conformity  to  the 
established  order  of  creeds  and  churches.  Who  does 
not  see  that  Paul,  though  he  had  never  seen  Jesus 
in  the  flesh  and  was  regarded  with  jealousy  by  the 
original  apostles  as  an  interloper  and  innovator  of 
dangerous  doctrines,  was  yet  a  truer  apostle  of  Jesus 
than  were  they  ?  Paul,  with  his  idea  of  the  univer- 
sality of  the  gospel,  embracing  the  Gentile  world, 
was  the  really  Christian  apostle ;  while  the  twelve 
were  little  more  than  partially  reformed  Jews. 
Again,  Wiclif  and  Huss  and  Luther,  Calvin  and 
Zwingle,  though  trampling  on  the  authority  of  the 
Church  and  introducing  new  doctrines  and  ecclesi- 
astical usages,  were  yet,  by  spiritual  descent,  more 
legitimately  priests  of  Christianity  than  were  the 
popes  and  bishops  who  excommunicated  them.  So, 
in  England  to-day,  it  is  not  the  High  Church  party, 
trying  to  stand  so  straight  by  ecclesiastical  tradition 
and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  that  it  leans  backward 
toward  Rome, —  it  is  not  this  party  that  is  carrying 
out,  by  true  succession,  the  principles  of  the  Refor- 
mation, but  rather  the  heresy-suspected  leaders  of 
the  Broad  Church  party, —  Jowett,  Whately,  Stanley, 
and  the  lamented  Arnold  and  Robertson,  or  even 
the  open  dissenters.  Fox  and  Wesley  and  Bunyan 
denounced  Church  and  priest ;  yet,  by  the  laying 
on  of  spiritual   hands,  they  were  more  legitimately 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  I  3 

successors  in  God's  line  of  priesthood  than  the 
Archbishops  of  York  or  Canterbury.  So,  if  we 
were  to  look  for  the  true  successors  of  Fox  and 
Penn,  we  might  not  find  them  in  the  sect  that,  from 
the  effort  to  stand  upon  their  protest  against  forms 
and  ceremonies  in  religion,  has  become  the  most 
severely  formal  of  all  religious  denominations.  The 
cause  of  the  persecuted  Independents,  who  fled 
from  the  tyranny  of  the  English  Church  to  find  an 
asylum  in  New  England,  is  better  upheld  now  by 
the  liberal  sects  than  by  those  who  still  subscribe  to 
the  Puritan  creed.  And  to  come  still  nearer  home, 
when  I  read  the  sublime  pleas  of  Channing  for  the 
fullest  liberty  of  religious  inquiry  and  the  formation 
of  religious  opinions  untrammelled  by  the  authority 
of  great  names  or  ecclesiastical  organizations,  and 
when  I  remember  his  earnest  protestations  against 
imposing  upon  the  convictions  of  a  single  soul  the 
bondage  of  a  creed  or  making  articles  of  faith  the 
test  of  religion,  I  can  but  ask  whether  those  who 
call  themselves  "  Channing  Unitarians,"  because, 
forsooth,  they  adopt  his  beliefs,  are,  in  reality,  so 
truly  his  followers  as  those  who,  entering  into  his 
labors  and  adopting  his  methods  of  fearless  inquiry 
and  criticism,  have  taken  up  the  results  of  his 
thought  and  advanced  to  still  greater  victories  over 
the  degrading  errors  of  the  popular  theology  and  to 
still  clearer  visions  of  religious  truth.  It  behooves 
us,  at  least,  to  inquire  whether  to  stand  where  Chan- 
ning stood  is  to  be  his  follower.  None,  I  am  sure, 
quicker  than  he  would  rebuke  the  attempt  to  build 
a   sect   upon    his    creed   by  cutting   off   all   inquiry 


14  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

beyond.  To  stop  at  his  results,  as  though  all  truth 
were  found,  is  not  to  honor,  but  to  defame  his 
memory.  The  only  church  that  can  be  an  honest 
monument  to  his  name  and  truly  claim  him  as  its 
great  apostle  is  that  which,  with  the  largest  freedom 
of  religious  inquiry  and  indefinite  progress  in  relig- 
ious truth,  combines  the  utmost  charity  to  oppo- 
nents in  opinion  and  love  to  all  men.  Away,  then, 
with  that  childishness  that  talks  of  there  being  "  no 
more  road  in  the  direction  we  have  been  £roin2: "  ! 
It  is  as  ludicrously  short-sighted  as  the  opinion  of 
the  commissioners  appointed,  two  hundred  years 
ago,  by  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  to  lay  out 
a  public  road  into  the  wilderness  ten  miles  west  from 
Boston,  who,  in  their  final  report,  congratulated  the 
General  Court  on  the  completion  of  the  work,  even 
at  the  great  and  unexpected  cost,  as  there  would 
never  be  need  of  a  road  any  farther  in  that  direc- 
tion !  Nay,  it  is  worse  than  short-sightedness,  this 
talk  of  turning  our  forces,  fatigued  with  the  long 
march,  to  seek  repose  in  the  dreamy  sanctity  of 
venerable  ecclesiastic  rites  and  a  "mystic  church 
organization."  It  is  infidelity  to  our  Protestant  in- 
heritance, infidelity  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  infi- 
delity to  the  great  trusts  we  have  assumed  for 
humanity  by  virtue  of  our  position,  infidelity  to  the 
guiding  Providence  of  God,  and  a  cowardly  distrust 
of  the  powers  he  has  committed  to  man.* 

We   may  see,  then,  from    the   foregoing   illustra- 

*The  references  in  the  above  sentences  are  to  the  then  much  discussed  sermon 
of  Dr.  Bellows,  on  "The  Suspense  of  Faith,"  given  at  Cambridge  in  the  preceding 
summer,  1859. 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  I  5 

tions,  how  the  lineage  of  the  true  apostolic  succes- 
sion runs  ;  that  it  is  not  identical  nor  parallel  with 
ecclesiastical  lineage,  but  crosses  and  denies  its 
legitimacy  ;  that  it  is  not  to  be  found  intact  in  any 
one  church  or  sect,  but  breaks  through  churches  and 
sects,  and  follows  always  the  line  of  development  in 
religious  ideas ;  that,  finally,  God's  priesthood  are 
not  ordained  by  the  laying  on  of  ecclesiastic  hands, 
but  by  the  revelation  of  truth  to  the  soul.  And  in 
this  priestly  succession  stands  many  a  one  without 
mitre  or  surplice,  unfrocked,  and  unconsecrated  by 
ecclesiastic  hand, —  many  a  one  who  never  stands  in 
pulpit  or  speaks  in  the  priestly  name.  So,  too,  there 
is  many  a  surpliced  or  cassocked  preacher,  many 
a  one  whose  ecclesiastic  validity  is  amply  authenti- 
cated by  all  the  forms  of  the  Church,  and*who  may 
speak  from  the  pulpit  every  Sunday  with  priestly 
authority  to  the  people,  who  yet  has  no  part  in  this 
apostolic  succession  of  God's  priesthood  and  (to 
adopt  with  a  little  variation  .Dr.  Channing's  phrase- 
ology) no  validity  of  the  Spirit's  grace,  though  all 
the  unctuous  hands  of  Rome,  Geneva,.  Princeton,  or 
Cambridge,  have  been  laid  upon  him.  But  to  whom- 
soever and  wheresoever  the  truth  is  shown,  if  it  be 
but  uttered  again,  in  public  or  in  private  speech,  by 
pen  or  spoken  word,  there  is  a  prophet  of  God ;  one 
who  stands  by  true  commission  in  the  eternal  order 
of  the  Spirit's  priesthood.  And  all  they  to  whom 
the  truth  is  shown,  by  whomsoever  or  wheresoever 
shown,  and  who  strive  faithfully  to  live  thereby, 
whether  in  the  limits  or  out  of  the  limits  of  ecclesi- 
astic lines,  constitute  the    true    Broad    Church,  the 


1 6  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

real  Catholic  Church,  which  breaks  over  all  the 
partition  walls  of  sect,  and  joins  in  one  spiritual 
fellowship  the  true  and  holy  souls  of  all  nations, 
ages,  and  religions. 

My  friends,  I  pray  that  it  be  into  no  merely  eccle- 
siastical order  of  ministerial  succession  that  I  now 
enter  among  you.  If  I  felt  that  I  had  no  validity 
save  what  came  to  me  through  the  churchly  cere- 
monies of  last  week,  severely  simple  though  they 
were,  I  should  not  stand  here  to-day.  I  do  not 
come  among  you  to  help  build  up  a  sect,  or  to  fill 
your  pews,  or  to  perform  merely  the  priestly  office 
in  your  homes.  I  come  to  speak  to  you  whatever  of 
truth  may  by  God's  grace  be  shown  to  me.  I  ask 
only  that  you  may  listen  by  the  same  grace.  I  be- 
lieve that  the  mission  of  Unitarian  Christianity  is 
higher  and  larger  than  simply  to  make  a  new  relig- 
ious sect  or  to  open  new  places  for  Sunday  worship 
or  to  fill  old  ones, —  namely:  to  liberalize  and  spirit- 
ualize all  sects,  to  make  all  society  religious  and 
all  life  worship ;  and  all  ecclesiastical  organizations, 
forms,  rituals,  ministers,  missions,  houses  of  worship, 
the  very  Church  itself,  are  nothing,  and  worse  than 
nothing,  if  they  do  not  effect  this. 

This  morning's  sun  brought  the  birth  of  the  eigh- 
teen hundred  and  sixtieth  year  of  the  Christian  era. 
Eighteen  hundred  and  sixty  years  since  that  Life 
appeared  in  Galilee,  which  seemed  so  divine  a  thing 
that  it  became  the  measure  of  time  and  named  the 
civilized  world !  In  these  years,  what  successions 
of  priests  have  come  forth  in  the  name  of  Christ, 
and   passed    away ;    how    numberless    the   churches 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  1 7 

dedicated  to  his  memory ;  what  countless  crowds 
of  worshippers  have  knelt  at  his  altars ;  how  various 
the  sects  claiming  his  authority  for  their  doctrines 
and  practices ;  what  conflicting  systems  of  theology 
have  been  built  upon  his  words ;  what  imposing 
pageantries  of  ritual  and  ceremony,  what  costly 
and  complicated  organizations,  what  a  vast  array 
of  ecclesiastical  machinery,  what  wealth  and  en- 
ginery of  material  and  political  forces,  have  gathered 
around  that  humbly  born  life  in  Nazareth!  But 
what  more  ?  Has  that  life  been  lived  ?  Do  we 
dare  to  live  it  yet  ?  Does  it  appear  in  society,  in 
government?  Do  we  yet  trust  the  principles  of 
peace  that  this  Prince  of  Peace  proclaimed  ?  Count 
our  armies.  See  our  bristling  forts.  Look  at 
Christian  Europe  in  arms  to-day.  No :  *we  have 
no  faith  in  Christ.  We  dare  not  trust  the  principles 
he  uttered,  till  the  whole  world  shall  adopt  them. 
Do  we  yet  enact  his  precepts  in  our  laws  ?  A  slave 
woman  comes  to  you,  flying,  for  freedom,  for  purity, 
for  life.  You  must  violate  your  laws,  if  you  will 
give  her  humane  shelter.  You  must  hang  the  men 
who  go  down  to  the  tyrant's  house,  with  chivalrous 
hearts,  to  set  her  free.  Look  into  the  world  of 
business.  Does  Christ's  life  appear  there  ?  Does 
the  merchant  always  dare  to  follow  the  laws  of 
justice  and  strict  honesty,  when  they  interfere  with 
what  he  calls  the  laws  of  trade  ?  No :  the  Christian 
sects  do  not  dare  to  live  Christ's  life  yet.  For  cen- 
turies, now,  the  civilized  world  has  borne  his  name. 
It  has  prayed  to  him  and  through  him  ;  it  has  called 
him  Son  of  God,  nay,  God  himself ;  it  has  invented 


1 8  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

ingenious  devices  of  theology  by  which  he  may  save 
mankind ;  men  have  preached  him,  read  him,  ad- 
mired him,  worshipped  him  ;  but  who  yet  dares  to 
live  as  he  lived,  with  no  authority  but  Truth,  no 
law  but  Right,  no  master  but  God  ?  With  all  its 
massive  and  wide-spread  organizations,  with  all  this 
ecclesiastical  machinery  and  power, —  nay,  with  all 
its  victories,  for  it  has  them, —  how  little,  when  we 
consider  its  resources,  has  Christianity  done  toward 
Christianizing  society ! 

And,  if  we  were  to  look  for  the  cause  of  these 
small  results,  we  should  find  it,  I  believe,  to  be 
chiefly  that  there  has  been  too  much  organization, 
too  much  mechanism,  too  much  Church.  The  power 
has  been  nearly  spent  in  moving  the  machinery. 
It  is  an  historical  fact  that,  so  far  as  Christian  truth 
or  the  moral  essence  of  Christianity  has  made  prog- 
ress in  society  and  appeared  in  the  reform  of  laws 
and  social  institutions,  it  has  done  so,  not  through 
the  organic  action  of  the  Church,  but  against  it. 
And,  at  this  very  day,  it  is  the  most  powerful  and 
strongly  organized  Christian  sects  that  most  stand 
in  the  way  of  the  progress  of  religious  truth  and 
social  reforms.  It  is  not  the  "  organic,  instituted, 
ritualized,"  imperial  Church,  with  its  mystic  sanctity 
and  symbols,  with  its  sacred  days  and  usages  made 
venerable  by  centuries  of  repetition,  that  is  to  bring 
the  kingdom  of  God ;  nor  yet  is  that  kingdom  to 
come  through  the  priests  of  this  Church,  made  such 
only  by  ecclesiastic  grace.  But  wherever  a  single 
soul  bows  with  more  passionate  devotion  to  truth, 
and  resolves  to  follow  the  truth  wheresoever  it  may 


APOSTOLIC    SUCCESSION  19 

lead,  through  whatsoever  road,  and  though  losing 
all  things  else,  even  life  itself,  there  is  a  member  of 
God's  Church  and  a  true  minister  in  the  line  of  his 
priesthood. 

It  is  into  the  order  of  the  holy  priesthood  of  this 
inorganic,  spiritual  Church  that  I  pray  this  day  to 
enter.  It  is  into  the  membership  —  yea,  ministry  — 
of  this  Church  that  I  invite  you.  If  I  can  lift  any 
souls  among  you  to  more  ennobling  truth,  to  purer 
love,  to  stronger  virtue,  if  I  can  quicken  your  spirit- 
ual vision  and  lead  any  of  you  to  see  more  clearly 
the  infinite  beauty  of  a  life  proportioned  to  the  laws 
of  Eternal  Rectitude,  then  will  these  New  Year's 
vows  of  consecration  be  crowned  indeed  with  bless- 
ing, being  followed  in  due  season  by  seed-time 
showers  and  hopes,  maturing  summer  suns,  and 
autumn  harvests  of  ripened  souls. 

January  1,  r86o. 


II. 

THE   SOUL'S    REST. 

"Return  unto  thy  rest,  O  my  soul." — Psalm  cxvi.,  7. 

"There  would  seem,"  says  a  living  writer  and  one 
of  the  greatest  of  living  preachers,*  "to  be  an  incu- 
rable variance  between  the  life  which  men  covet  for 
themselves  and  that  which  they  admire  in  others ; 
nay,  between  the  lot  which  they  would  choose 
beforehand  and  that  in  which  they  glory  afterwards. 
In  prospect,  nothing  appears  so  attractive  as  ease 
and  licensed  comfort ;  in  retrospect,  nothing  so  de- 
lightful as  toil  and  strenuous  service." 

The  truth  of  this  remark  is  being  repeatedly 
impressed  upon  us  both  by  public  and  private  cir- 
cumstance. It  does  seem  as  if  Providence  had  con- 
ditioned us  to  a  lot  of  labor  and  struggle, —  nay, 
forced  it  upon  us, —  while  our  first  aim  is  to  smooth 
our  path  and  prepare  the  way  for  an  after  happi- 
ness which  consists  in  rest  and  passive  pleasure. 
The  Creator  leaves  no  soul  at  ease.  If  inherited 
circumstances  give  you  the  perilous  opportunity, 
you  may  try  the  problem  of  an  inactive  life,  resist- 
less to  any  inclination  or  whim  that  the  hour  may 
give  birth  to  ;  but  be  assured  that,  for  as  many  hours 

*  James  Martineau. 


THE    SOUL  S    REST  21 

thus  spent,  nature,  which  is  the  working  of  divine 
laws,  will  demand  in  payment  an  equal  number  of 
hours  of  weariness  and  disgust,  of  aching  nerves  and 
empty  heart, —  a  gnawing  consciousness  of  a  destiny 
unfulfilled  and  of  faculties  craving  a  rest  they  have 
not  yet  attained.  If  inheritance,  fortunately,  has 
not  put  your  life  to  such  a  hazard,  then  you  are 
forced  to  an  existence  of  toil,  of  body  or  mind,  in 
order  to  keep  that  very  existence.  The  earth  will 
not  yield  you  bread  till  you  have  ploughed  and 
tilled  ;  and,  in  the  furrow  where  you  plant  your  seed, 
God  grows  weeds  as  well  as  corn,  in  order  to  task 
your  energies  still  the  more.  You  must  fell  the 
forests  before  they  shelter  you ;  spin  the  cotton, 
weave  the  wool,  before  they  clothe  you ;  build  the 
ship  and  invent  compass  and  chart  before  you  can 
bring  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  serve  your  needs. 
We  are  thrown  upon  a  world  of  wild,  half-savage 
material  forces,  which  we  must  either  tame  and 
subdue  to  service  or  be  destroyed  by  them.  Yet 
all  the  time,  throughout  the  struggle,  we  cry  for 
respite  and  rest ;  and  the  most  prevailing  motive 
that  spurs  on  these  toiling  millions  of  men  and 
women  all  around  the  globe  is  the  hope  that  by 
and  by  toil  will  cease  in  competency,  and  struggle 
be  rewarded  with  independent  ease. 

Just  so  it  is  with  our  moral  and  spiritual  condi- 
tion. We  cannot  get  food  for  our  intellects,  we  can- 
not clothe  our  souls  in  the  virtues,  we  cannot  orna- 
ment them  with  the  graces  of  character,  we  cannot 
build  up  good  society  and  good  institutions  around 
us,  we  cannot   have   good  governments,  good  laws, 


22  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

and  good  charitable  organizations,  we  cannot  be  safe 
in  our  houses  or  in  the  street,  we  cannot  do  away 
with  evil  institutions,  with  crime  and  corruption  and 
vices, —  our  own  or  those  of  the  community, —  we 
cannot,  I  say,  have  or  do  any  of  these  things  without 
labor  and  study  and  struggle  and  assiduous  culture. 
We  are  thrown  upon  a  world  of  wild,  unregulated 
moral  forces,  which  we  must  also  tame  and  bring 
to    service,  or  they,  too,  will  work  our  destruction. 

Yet  all  the  time,  as  in  the  physical,  so  in  this 
moral  struggle,  we  sigh  for  rest ;  and  the  strongest 
incentive  that  urges  us  along  the  path  of  conflict  is 
the  hoped-for  ease  to  come  at  the  end.  We  are 
driven  to  the  battle,  not  so  much  that  the  truth  and 
the  right  may  be  victorious  as  for  the  sake  of  the 
peace  that  will  follow.  Wearied  with  the  assaults 
of  passion,  we  long  for  an  untempted  virtue.  Our 
comfort  invaded  by  the  dust  and  din  of  contending 
forces,  we  yearn  for  the  quiet  of  neutrality,  and 
for  the  sake  of  ease  are  not  infrequently  tempted 
into  dishonorable  treaties  with  vices  that  ought  to 
be  recognized  only  to  be  exterminated. 

And  so,  generally,  the  moral  condition  which  we 
covet  is  just  the  reverse  of  that  to  which  we  have 
been  born.  Born  for  contest,  we  ask  for  repose. 
We  would  skip,  if  possible,  the  drill  and  the  disci- 
pline, and  clutch  at  once  the  prizes  of  victory. 
How  many  of  us  go  through  life  like  complaining 
school-children, —  doing  our  tasks,  it  may  be,  but 
longing  for  the  time  when  books  shall  be  put  aside 
and  all  lessons  come  to  an  end !  Questions,  it  may 
be,   besiege   the    intellect,  demanding  of  it   activity 


THE    SOUL  S    REST 


and  decision ;  doubts,  perhaps,  of  the  old  settlement 
of  religious  things  in  which  we  have  been  educated, 
—  doubts  and  questionings  and  conflicts  and  search- 
ing inquiry,  which  are  the  providential  order  of 
removing  error  and  bringing  in  the  light  of  truth. 
Yet,  tired  of  the  intellectual  struggle,  appalled  by 
the  view  that  seems  to  keep  man's  reason  in  con- 
stant tension  and  humanity  in  continual  march,  we 
are  often  tempted  to  escape  the  responsibilities  that 
our  faculties  impose  upon  us,  and,  suspending  rea- 
son, to  sink  back  on  the  soft  cushions  of  ecclesias- 
tical authority.  Thus  it  is  that  some  struggling 
souls,  shrinking  from  the  conflict  and  from  the  inev- 
itable conclusions  that  the  Protestant  principle  of 
individual  inquiry  forces  upon  them,  seek  for  rest 
and  try  to  lull  all  religious  questionings  to*sleep  on 
the  ready-made  bed  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

Or  it  may  be  that  it  is  a  moral  contest  we  have 
entered  upon, —  a  contest  with  social  evils  around 
us  or  with  the  nearer  evils  in-our  own  breasts.  But 
we  find  that  the  battle  goes  hard  against  us.  So- 
ciety is  slow  to  acknowledge  its  sins,  and  still  slower 
to  remove  them.  Public  opinion  frowns  upon  our 
efforts.  Friends,  even,  regard  our  schemes  as  Uto- 
pian, and  evidence  only  of  amiable  weakness.  And 
the  very  classes  of  society  we  would  help,  not  infre- 
quently suspect  and  resist  the  aid  that  we  offer. 
With  so  much  against  us,  it  is  not  strange  if  we 
should  often  be  sorely  tempted  to  give  over  the 
battle,  and  let  ourselves  float  smoothly  along  with 
the  stronger  current  of  popular  opinion,  leaving  it 
to  God  (as  we  say,  in  phrase  that  sounds  more  pious 


24  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

than  it  is),  who  has  permitted  evil,  to  take  care  of  it. 
And  this  fallacious  rest  we  often  try,  too,  when  the 
moral  struggle  is  with  ourselves.  Our  evil  habits 
too  strong  for  one  encounter,  our  vices  too  deeply 
rooted  to  be  washed  out  by  mere  tears  of  repentance, 
the  passions  —  avarice,  selfish  ambition,  carnal  appe- 
tite—  from  continued  indulgence  grown  inordinate 
in  their  demands,  and  all  the  forces  of  our  being 
having  fallen  under  the  control  of  our  lower  nature, 
conscience,  maimed  and  bleeding,  is  often  tempted 
to  retire  from  the  hard  contest  on  the  high  ground 
of  moral  law,  to  try  the  flattering  repose  offered  by 
the  code  of  social  respectability.  And  hence  it  is 
that  very  many  come  to  accept  as  the  standard  of 
their  lives,  not  what  the  highest  moral  truth  de- 
mands, but  what  the  common  decencies  of  society 
will  allow ;  while  only  a  prayer  is  left  that  He  who 
has  made  us  with  passions,  and  thrown  this  conflict 
with  them  upon  us,  will  somehow  grant  us  rest  from 
their  tyranny  on  a  higher  level  hereafter.  Religion, 
too,  or  much  that  passes  in  its  name,  not  infre- 
quently fosters  this  easy  faith,  and,  instead  of  nerv- 
ing us  to  strong  encounter  with  evil,  degenerates 
into  plaintive  whining  over  the  ills  of  earth  and 
sighing  for  the  rest  of  heaven. 

But,  notwithstanding  the  prevailing  extent  of  this 
desire  for  repose  and  the  fallacious  arguments  with 
which  we  attempt  to  cover  our  own  delinquencies  in 
the  matter,  human  nature,  in  its  inmost  heart,  is 
sound,  and  honors  no  repose  which  is  not  honorably 
achieved  by  contest  and  victory.  Human  nature  is 
to  be  judged,  not  by  the  standard  which  individual 


THE   SOUL'S    REST  2$ 

men  live  by,  or  even  set  for  themselves,  but  by  that 
which  they  most  admire  in  others  ;   and  that  must 
be  regarded  as  the  aim  of  humanity  at  large,  which, 
though  exhibited  in  the  attainment  of  but  a  single 
individual,  gathers  about  it  the  greatest  number  who 
applaud  and  revere  it.     What  craven  spirit  was  ever 
admired    in    history   or   in    fiction  ?     Who   but   the 
brave,   who    but    those    who    against    all    obstacles 
have  contended  manfully  and  unflinchingly  and  kept 
their  integrity  to   the   bitter   end,  have  ever   been 
adopted  as  the  models  or  worshipped  as  the  heroes  of 
mankind  ?     How  immeasurably  more  has  the  world 
admired  the  character  of   Socrates   for   refusing  to 
avail  himself  of  the  plan  of  his  jailer,  who  had  been 
bribed  to  aid  his  escape  !     And  yet  few  are  the  per- 
sons  in   all    history  whose  moral    sense  would   not 
have  been  confused  by  such  an  offer.     And,  if  the 
Athenian  sage  had  faltered  and  used  the  proffered 
means  of   saving   his  life,  we  should  have  found,  I 
will  not   say  merely  apologies   for,  but  defences  of 
the  act  even  as  a  duty, —  as,  indeed,  in  thousands  of 
similar  cases  has  been  done,  and  as  most  of  us  per- 
haps would  be  likely  to  do,  if  the  case  were  to  come 
home  to  ourselves  to-day.     But,  such  an  example  of 
unmoved  integrity  once  set,  humanity  is  true  enough 
to  recognize  it  as  a  higher  order  of  virtue  than  flight, 
however   guiltless,    would   have   been,    and   to    bow 
before   it   in   admiring   reverence,  though  few  may 
have  the  courage  to  be  its  imitators.     And  when  we 
come    to    that    most  admired    character   of   all,  the 
name  highest  and  most  beloved  of  history,  what  is 
it  that  has  made  Jesus  to  be  regarded  as  the  proto- 


26  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

type  of  all  human  perfections,  worshipped  indeed  as 
God  himself,  and  the  word  "  Christian  "  to  be  a  syno- 
nyme  of  all  that  is  most  elevated  in  virtue  and  most 
amiable  in  character?  What  is  it  but  that  Jesus 
stood,  like  Divine  Majesty  itself,  firm  for  the  truth, 
unyielding  before  corruption  and  hypocrisy,  gentle 
and  forgiving,  yet  bearing  faithfully  the  burdens  of 
his  mission,  not  flinching  before  violence  nor  swerv- 
ing for  adulation,  and  meeting  the  cross  with  such 
a  spirit  of  love  and  of  triumph  that  he  consecrated  it 
as  "  a  thing  of  beauty  "  forever  ? 

And,  moreover,  we  admire  such  character  as  this 
for  its  own  sake,  for  a  majesty  and  divineness  in 
itself,  and  not  for  any  after  good  it  may  issue  in. 
Nay,  our  admiration  would  be  sensibly  diminished, 
if  we  could  for  a  moment  suppose  such  a  character 
sustained  only  by  the  hope  of  some  after  blessing  as 
a  reward ;  nor  can  we  conceive  that  all  these  excel- 
lences were  practically  annihilated  at  the  grave  by 
the  soul's  then  passing  into  a  condition  of  absolute 
repose. 

These  two  points,  then,  seem  to  be  clearly  estab- 
lished :  first,  in  the  midst  of  the  toil,  trials,  and 
struggles  of  our  lot  there  is  an  instinctive  craving 
within  us  for  rest ;  and  yet,  secondly,  the  standard 
of  life  which  we  also  instinctively  place  the  highest, 
and  which,  at  the  bottom  of  our  hearts,  we  do  most 
really  admire,  is  that  in  which  there  is  the  least  of 
rest.  Solve  this  seeming  paradox,  and  we  shall 
answer  the  question  of  tvhat  the  soul's  rest  is. 

We  crave  for  rest,  it  is  true  ;  and  the  desire  is  so 
universal  that  it  must   be  regarded   as    instinctive. 


THE    SOUL  S    REST  2J 

But,  like  all  our  instincts,  the  desire  is  blind.  In- 
stinct does  not  see  and  consciously  choose  its  end, 
but  gives  only  direction  toward  a  certain  satisfaction 
which  human  nature  requires  in  order  to  fulfil  its 
destiny.  What  is  the  extent  and  character  of  that 
satisfaction,  not  any  one  instinct  or  desire,  but  the 
whole  nature,  must  determine.  What,  then,  is  the 
kind  of  rest  which  the  human  soul  demands,  and 
which  alone  can  satisfy  its  desires  ? 

Rest  and  motion,  used  in  their  primitive  meaning, 
referring  to  material  things,  have  both  a  relative  and 
an  absolute  sense.  A  body  is  at  absolute  rest  when 
it  keeps  the  same  position  with  regard  to  a  fixed 
point  in  space  ;  in  motion,  when  it  departs  from  such 
a  point.  But  two  bodies,  though  both  in  motion, 
are  relatively  at  rest  when  they  keep  the  same  posi- 
tion with  regard  to  each  other.  Now,  how  can  these 
terms,  or  more  particularly  the  term  "  rest,"  be  used 
of  spirit,  or  of  mental  and  moral  life  ?  Not,  I  answer, 
in  an  absolute  sense  at  all.  -  The  very  word  spirit 
implies  life,  movement,  energy, —  the  very  opposite 
of  inertia  and  passivity,  which  are  the  characteristics 
of  matter.  To  spirit,  then,  there  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  absolute  rest.  It  can  have,  evidently,  only 
relative  rest, —  the  rest  that  depends  on  unison  of 
movement.  And  the  rest,  therefore,  which  our  hu- 
man spirits  crave,  and  which  can  alone  satisfy  their 
needs,  is  not  the  rest  of  inactivity  and  inertia,  but 
the  rest  of  harmony. 

But  harmony  with  what  ?  Harmony  with  the 
Divine  Spirit, —  harmony  with  the  Universal  Spirit, 
—  whose  aim  and  movements  we  may  know  by  its 


2S  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

pulse-beats  in  our  consciousness  ;  by  our  best  affec- 
tions and  aspirations  and  the  voice  of  conscience, 
which,  as  they  assert  their  supreme  authority  within 
us,  lay  down  also  the  laws  of  our  being's  guidance. 
There  can  be  no  rest  for  us  but  in  obedience  to 
these  laws  of  our  being,  which  are  the  laws  of  God  ; 
no  rest  for  our  bodies  but  in  obeying  the  laws 
of  health, —  not  overtasking,  not  undertasking  our 
physical  powers,  but  giving  to  each  just  the  action 
that  it  needs  to  keep  it  in  vigorous,  healthy  life. 
And  very  much,  I  am  satisfied,  of  this  plaintive, 
unmanly  sighing  for  rest,  which  often  passes  for 
religious  aspiration,  is  nothing  but  the  jar  and  creak- 
ing of  shattered  nerves.  Yet  physical  laws  are 
subordinate,  and  must  sometimes  be  broken,  in 
order  that  higher  laws  may  be  obeyed.  For,  again, 
there  can  be  no  rest  for  our  moral  and  spiritual 
natures, —  no  rest  for  our  hearts,  no  rest  for  our 
minds,  no  rest  for  our  aspirations  and  consciences, 
—  unless  we  faithfully  follow  their  highest  bent  and 
laws  of  action.  Have  we  evil  habits  and  vices  ? 
There  can  be  no  rest  but  in  meeting  them,  strug- 
gling with  them,  conquering  them.  Are  there  social 
evils  around  us  for  which  by  omission  or  commission 
we  are  in  any  way  responsible  ?  There  can  be  no 
rest  but  in  entering  the  field  of  conflict  against 
them.  Are  there  miseries  to  be  alleviated,  broken 
spirits  to  be  healed,  wrongs  and  oppressions  to  be 
righted,  poverty  to  be  enriched  with  sympathy,  igno- 
rance with  instruction  ?  Then  there  can  be  no  rest 
but  in  taking  upon  ourselves,  in  some  form,  the 
office   of   the    comforter  and    savior.     Is   there  any 


THE    SOUL  S    REST*  29 

wisdom  and  light  in  the  heavens  above  us,  not  yet 
penetrated  by  our  mental  vision  ?  Then  there  is  no 
rest  for  our  intellects  but  in  constant  ascent,  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  mental  progress,  through  the 
successively  ascending  fields  of  infinite  science. 
Finally,  is  there  any  ideal  of  life  still  above  us, 
sometimes,  perhaps,  for  a  moment  seized  and  then 
again  floating  away  beyond  our  present  reach,  but 
radiant  there  in  the  clear  sunshine,  with  heavenly 
beauty  ?  Then  there  can  be  no  rest  for  our  souls 
but  in  daily  striving,  aspiring,  ascending,  till  we 
attain  and  realize  it. 

The  rest,  then,  that  our  natures  crave  is  not  the 
repose  of  passivity,  of  listlessness,  of  sleep,  but  the 
rest  of  healthy  spiritual  life, —  of  life  in  accordance 
with  the  laws  of  our  being,  which  are  laws*  of  pro- 
gressive activity,  and,  if  obeyed,  put  us  into  harmony 
with  the  spirit  and  peace  of  God.  The  rest  that  we 
want  is  like  the  rest  you  may  have  in  a  railroad  car, 
where,  though  you  may  be  moving  with  immense 
rapidity,  yet  with  respect  to  the  whole  train  you 
are  relatively  in  repose,  because  you  are  in  harmony 
with  it  and  the  mighty  force  that  takes  it  forward. 
Or,  better,  it  is  the  rest  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
which,  though  all  may  be  in  rapid  and  varied  move- 
ment, are  yet  at  peace  with  regard  to  each  other, 
because  moving  according  to  the  harmony  of  a 
divine  law.  And  such  rest  as  this  we  can  have, 
though  in  the  midst  of  labor  and  trial  and  conflict. 
It  is  the  rest  to  which  Jesus  invited  the  "weary 
and  heavy-laden  "  ;  the  rest,  not  of  those  who  have 
thrown    their   burdens    off    or   would    impose   them 


30  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

upon  others,  but  of  those  who  have  taken  upon 
them  the  yoke  of  God's  law,  and  find  the  "  yoke 
easy"  and  the  "burden  light,"  because,  through 
obedience  to  this  law,  a  mighty  strength  and  a 
mighty  peace  have  come  into  their  being.  Such 
rest  have  martyrs  had,  while  flames  and  tortures 
unspeakable  destroyed  with  slow  cruelty  the  body 
to  let  the  spirit  free.  And  such  rest  can  every  one 
of  us  possess,  whatever  our  lot  or  toil  or  duty  or 
trouble,  who  will  bow  unreservedly  to  the  mission 
and  the  laws  of  the  divine  Spirit  within  us,  and 
follow  it  by  whatsoever  path,  through  whatsoever 
conflicts,  to  whatsoever  end  it  may  lead. 

O  ye  "  weary,  heavy-laden "  souls,  return  unto 
your  rest!  "Return" — the  word  is  well  chosen. 
This  rest  is  yours  by  the  demand  of  your  natures. 
It  is  yours  by  the  original  endowment  and  laws  of 
your  being.  It  is  yours  by  your  place  in  creation's 
plan.  It  is  yours  by  the  dreams  of  your  youth,  by 
the  prayers  that  went  up  from  the  homes  of  your 
childhood.  Return  to  it, —  to  this  rest  prefigured  in 
your  natures,  promised,  by  the  Highest  Giver,  in 
your  earliest  hopes  of  what  your  life  might  be,  and 
still  longed  for,  with  secret  longings  unutterable, 
in  your  inmost  hearts.  You  have  tried,  it  may  be, 
the  rest  of  ease  and  the  rest  of  travel ;  tried  the 
comforts  and  the  luxuries  of  wealth  ;  tried  the 
tempting  path  of  fame  ;  tried  the  ways  of  selfish 
pleasure  ;  ay,  tried,  perhaps,  the  lusts  of  appetite  : 
but  the  vulgar  enjoyment  of  the  hour  once  past,  the 
selfish  excitement  over,  your  real  self  with  you  alone 
again,  and  there  comes  back,  week  in,  week  out,  this 


THE    SOUL'S    REST  31 

same  old  weariness  of  heart,  emptiness  of  aim,  and 
crying  for  a  rest  that  none  of  these  things  can  give. 
Let  go  these  husks,  then,  and  return  to  the  old 
home&love,  to  the  dreams  of  your  childhood,  to  the 
noble,  heroic,  faithful  manly  or  womanly  life  that 
floated  in  ideal  before  the  vision  and  won  the  ad- 
miration of  your  youth.  Return  to  the  highest 
demands  of  your  natures,  which  are  a  revelation  of 
God's  demands  upon  you ;  and,  behold,  the  infinite 
peace  of  God  shall  flow  without  measure  into  your 
being,  and  give  you  the  rest  that  is  everlasting. 

January  20,  1S61. 


Note -This  discourse  was  also  preached  in  the  Unitarian  church 
in  Washington,  July  21,  1861,  the  day  of  the  first  battle  of  Bull  Run. 
As  the  congregation  came  out  of  the  church,  the  booming  of  cannon 
could  be  distinctly  heard  across  the  Potomac. 


III. 

GOD   IN    NATURE. 

"  And  the  earth  was  without  form,  and  void ;  and  darkness  was 
upon  the  face  of  the  deep.  And  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the 
face  of  the  waters." — Gen.  i.,  2. 

"  Consider  the  lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grow."— Matt,  vi.,  28. 

I  have  coupled  these  texts  together  as  a  con- 
venient indication  of  the  course  of  thought  I  wish 
to  present  this  morning  on  the  manifestation  of 
God  in  Nature,  or  the  Divinity  of  the  Material  Uni- 
verse. 

Whether  we  look  into  these  old  Jewish  records  or 
into  the  still  older  Hindu,  into  the  fables  of  Gre- 
cian Hesiod  or  the  Eddas  of  Scandinavia,  we  find 
everywhere  that  the  earliest  problem  of  human 
thought  which  language  has  preserved  is  the  prob- 
lem of  creation, —  the  Whence  and  How  of  the  uni- 
verse. We  open  the  latest  issues  of  the  modern 
printing-press,  and  behold,  in  book  and  review,  the 
great  question  of  the  scientific  world  to-day  is  this 
same  old  problem  of  the  origin  of  things.  The 
problem  is  not,  perhaps,  strictly  a  religious  one 
either  in  its  old  or  its  new  shape ;  that  is,  all  the 
immediate  obligations  of  morality  and  practical  re- 
ligion are  clear  enough,  and  would  remain  the  same 
whether  the  world  was  made  in  six  days  or  in  six 


GOD    IN    NATURE  33 

thousand  years,  or  is  still  in  process  of  making.  And 
the  better  it  will  be  for  us,  the  sooner  we  arrive  at 
that  mental  state  wherein,  careful  only  for  the  truth, 
we  shall  become  indifferent  as  to  the  effect  upon 
religion  whether  this  or  that  particular  theory  of 
the  universe  shall  finally  be  established.  Still,  this 
problem  of  creation,  though  not  directly  connected 
with  religious  practice,  has  always  been,  and  is  neces- 
sarily, associated  with  religious  thought ;  and  there 
is  such  an  interdependence  among  our  faculties  that 
it  may  well  be  doubted  whether  truth  in  thought 
does  not  finally  connect  itself  with  truth  in  charac- 
ter, and  whether  any  religious  sect  can  long  con- 
tinue to  hold,  for  the  sake  of  its  theological  creed,  a 
scientific  falsehood  without  corresponding  narrow- 
ness appearing  somewhere  in  its  moral  and  spiritual 
life.  That,  indeed,  is  a  very  limited  view  of  the 
practical  in  religion  which  looks  only  to  the  giving 
of  homilies  that  can  be  converted  at  once  into  daily 
habits.  The  well-balanced  religious  life,  though  it 
must  always  include  outward  work,  yet  is  vastly 
more  than  that.  It  is  a  life  of  intellectual  as  well 
as  of  moral  and  spiritual  fidelity.  The  springs  of 
religion  lie  deep  and  are  wide-spread;  and  that  is 
but  a  superficial  religious  culture  which  does  not 
plough  into  the  subsoil  and  develop  the  riches  of 
every  field  of  our  complex  natures. 

We  may  find,  then,  ample  grounds  on  which  to 
discuss,  even  from  a  practical  stand-point  of  religious 
truth,  the  theme  to  which  I  ask  your  attention  in 
this  discourse. 

And,  first,  see  what  a  change  has  been  wrought, 


34  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

by  the  progress  of  knowledge,  in  the  popular  view 
of  this  subject.  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome,  which 
successively  led  the  human  race  in  civilization  and 
enlightenment,  all  divided  the  administration  of  the 
material  universe  among  many  deified  rulers.  The 
earth,  the  air,  the  sea,  and  woods  they  peopled 
with  unseen  beings,  by  the  immediate  fiat  of  whose 
wills  the  various  changes  and  operations  of  nature 
took  place.  Whether  the  sea  raged  or  stood  still, 
whether  the  wind  blew  from  the  north  or  from  the 
south,  whether  the  earth  clothed  itself  in  its  spring 
garments  of  green  or  the  autumn  leaf  fell  sere  to 
the  ground,  a  god,  a  spirit,  was  believed  to  be  there, 
immediately  and  consciously  acting.  But  science 
has  changed  all  this.  Mother  Ceres  has  been  ban- 
ished from  the  earth,  and  her  tender  housewifely 
care  of  the  spring  buds,  summer  flowers,  and  autumn 
harvests  is  now  only  a  beautiful  myth.  We  have 
not  yet  traced  the  laws  of  the  wind ;  but  we  do 
not  believe  longer  that  any  capricious  ^Eolus  locks 
them  up  in  his  cave,  and  lets  them  out  at  his  pleas- 
ure. No  Neptune  lives  for  us  in  the  sea,  to  com- 
mand its  waves.  No  Aurora  breaks  for  us  each 
morning  the  gates  of  darkness,  bringing  light  and 
life  upon  the  earth.  In  place  of  these  beautiful, 
poetic  imaginings,  we  now  have  positive  science  ;  for 
this  simple  faith,  we  now  have  demonstrated  facts  ; 
instead  of  these  living,  personal  deities,  we  now  have 
physical  laws ;  and,  (may  it  not  be  added  ?)  instead 
of  religion,  we  have  —  too  often  —  only  philosophy. 

Now,  the  advance  of  science  is  neither  to  be  stayed 
nor  deprecated.     We  must  submit  our  theologies  to 


GOD    IN    NATURE  35 

its  discoveries  and  analysis  as  well  as  all  other  de- 
partments of  our  knowledge  and  experience.  We 
must  modify  and  advance  our  theological  views  to 
conform  to  the  assured  conclusions  of  science,  or 
else  our  religious  faith  must  suffer  detriment ;  and, 
because  this  has  not  generally  been  done,  we  may 
well  doubt  whether  Deity  is  to  Christendom  so  real 
and  vital  a  presence  as  to  the  devotees  of  these  old 
religions  whom  we  have  been  so  forward  to  commis- 
erate and  enlighten.  The  unity  of  God  is  a  great 
truth ;  but,  if  we  cannot  hold  it  without  sacrificing 
the  universality  of  God,  then  it  may  well  be  ques- 
tioned whether,  in  our  entire  view  of  the  divine 
nature,  we  have  made  much  advance  upon  the  relig- 
ious beliefs  of  Greece  and  Rome.  If  we  cannot 
maintain  ourselves  at  the  elevation  of  Jesus,  where 
with  clear  vision  we  can  gaze  at  the  spiritual  one- 
ness of  Deity  and  at  the  same  time  feel  that  he 
who  inhabiteth  eternity  and  sitteth  upon  the  arch 
of  the  heavens  dwells  also  in  the  lowliest  human 
soul  and  clothes  the  humblest  lily  of  the  field,  then 
we  may  well  go  back  to  learn  the  preparatory  les- 
sons that  heathenism  has  for  us.  If  we  cannot 
believe  in  the  unity  of  God  without  falling  into  those 
dreary  theological  systems  which  banish  him  from 
the  earth  and  from  the  daily  changes  of  nature  to 
a  distant  throne  in  the  remotest  heavens,  from  which 
we  must  imagine  him  to  rule  and  judge  the  universe 
with  the  cold,  calculating  reserve  of  a  human  sover- 
eign ;  if  we  cannot  hold  the  unity  of  God  without 
giving  him  form,  and  circumscribing  him  in  space, 
and  picturing  him  with  all  the  attributes  of  a  finite 


36  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

ruler, —  then  I  am  not  sure  that  it  would  not  be 
better  for  us  to  leave  our  Bibles  for  a  while  and 
take  some  lessons  in  the  warmer  faith  of  the  old 
Pagan  mythology.  Better  than  this  one  cold,  dis- 
tant, deified  despotism  the  myriad  human  deities 
of  Greece  and  Rome.  Better  let  go  the  unity  of 
God  than  his  universality. 

But  we  need  not  take  this  backward  step.  Chris- 
tianity appears  originally  to  have  held  the  recogni- 
tion of  both  ideas.  A  fine  statement  of  their  unity 
was  made  in  the  apocryphal  book  called  "  The  Wis- 
dom of  Solomon,"  before  the  advent  of  Jesus.  But 
the  Christian  Church  and  Christian  theology  have 
too  often  failed  to  comprehend  this  finely  harmo- 
nized doctrine,  which  Jesus  by  virtue  of  his  spiritual 
genius  seems  to  have  assumed,  of  universal  and 
infinite  unity, —  of  one  spirit  pervading  the  whole 
universe,  of  mind  and  matter,  of  nature  and  man. 
In  order  to  prove  one  creator  and  governor  of  the 
world,  Deity  has  been  banished  outside  of  the  world. 

Incalculable  harm,  in  one  way,  has  been  done  to 
religion  by  such  works  as  Paley's.  You  know  the 
old  argument,  the  analogy  drawn  from  a  watch  :  if 
a  person  should  stumble  suddenly  upon  a  watch, 
and  examine  its  mechanism,  and  see  how  exquisitely 
all  its  parts  were  adapted  to  each  other  and  each  to 
its  office,  he  must  necessarily  conclude  that  it  was 
the  work  of  an  intelligent  contriver  and  maker.  In 
like  manner,  as  the  argument  runs,  from  studying 
the  universe, —  its  adaptation  of  part  to  part  and 
each  part  to  its  object, —  we  must  conclude  that  it, 
too,  is  the  work  of  an  intelligent  author.     Now,  the 


GOD    IN    NATURE  37 

universe  unquestionably  discloses  marks  of  nicest 
adaptation  and  the  most  consummate  wisdom.  But 
there  is  always  danger,  in  using  the  argument  from 
analogy,  that  we  push  it  too  far  ;  and  this  is  pecul- 
iarly the  danger  when  we  reason  from  finite  things 
to  infinite.  And  so  the  majority  of  persons,  I  sup- 
pose, who  adopt  Paley's  argument,  follow  it  up  till 
they  have  pictured  to  themselves  the  whole  act  and 
plan  of  creation,  and  creation  and  creator  have  be- 
come as  definite  conceptions  to  them  as  the  making 
and  maker  of  a  watch.  And,  going  so  far,  it  is 
almost  impossible  that  they  shall  not  push  the  anal- 
ogy still  farther ;  and,  since  a  watch,  having  once 
been  made  and  its  machinery  set  in  motion,  passes 
out  of  the  maker's  hands,  to  go  henceforth  by  the 
forces  brought  together  and  shut  up  wiriiin  it,  so 
they  conceive  that  the  world,  having  been  made 
and  put  into  operation  by  its  maker,  was  left  hence- 
forth to  go  of  itself,  in  accordance  with  certain  forces 
and  laws  impressed  upon  it  in  the  beginning.  More- 
over, this  analogical  result  seems  to  harmonize  with 
the  Mosaic  account  of  creation ;  and  hence  the 
Christian  Church  has  very  generally  accepted  it,  and 
branded  as  heretics  all  who  could  not  square  their 
opinions  on  this  intricate  subject  of  cosmogony  by 
the  childish  belief  that  the  world  was  made  like  a 
watch. 

But,  in  the  presence  of  modern  science,  how 
puerile  all  this  is !  Let  us  suppose  an  omniscient, 
all-powerful  Creator ;  a  Being  infinite  in  wisdom, 
whose  every  impulse  and  every  thought  at  every 
moment   must  be  equally  and  absolutely  perfect,  and 


38  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

no  act  of  whom,  on  account  of  this  infinite  per- 
fection, could  ever  fall  a  hair-breadth  short  of  its 
intent.  Shall  we  think  of  such  a  Being  as  com- 
pelled, like  imperfect,  plodding  man,  to  weigh  means 
against  results,  to  study  effects,  to  sit  down,  as  it 
were,  to  deliberate,  to  form  a  plan  of  the  universe, 
and  then  mechanically  to  construct  the  universe 
thereby  ?  And  when  to  the  conception  of  such  a 
Being  the  attribute  of  omnipresence  is  added,  how 
can  we  think  of  him,  the  all-comprehending,  the 
all-pervading  spirit  and  energy,  as  shut  out,  by  any 
mechanism  external  to  himself,  from  any  part  of 
creation,  from  any  atom  of  matter,  from  any  point  of 
space,  from  any  manifestation  of  life  ?  Throw  away, 
I  beseech  you,  this  god,  that  only  comes  in  to  round 
a  syllogism  or  to  flank  an  analogy.  It  is  an  idol,  as 
much  as  the  wooden  or  brazen  images  of  heathen- 
dom. Confessedly,  this  whole  analogical  argument 
only  proves  an  author  of  the  universe  :  it  does  not 
reach  the  Infinite.  Moreover,  as  an  argument,  it  is 
irremediably  vitiated  by  the  fact  that  the  watch 
itself,  which  is  assumed  as  the  known  side  of  the 
analogy,  involves  all  the  mysteries  which  the  anal- 
ogy is  to  explain.  An  intelligent  mind  must  have 
put  together  all  these  wheels  and  cogs  and  bal- 
ances :  that  is  true.  But  what  is  the  secret  power 
that  holds  those  shining  metallic  atoms  so  solidly 
together  ?  What  is  that  force  we  call  the  elasticity 
of  the  spring  ?  What  gives  hardness  to  the  wheels, 
that  they  act  and  react  upon  each  other  with  un- 
varying order?  We  must  fathom  all  these  secrets 
before  we  have  found  out  the  infinite   God.     And 


GOD    IN    NATURE  39 

the  question  is  not  whether  these  various  forces  are 
not  ultimately  to  be  referred  to  an  infinite  Being  as 
cause,  but  how  they  are  related  to  such  a  Being 
now. 

Again,  the  popular  conception  of  the  relation 
between  the  universe  and  Deity  meets  another  ob- 
jection. No  sooner  have  people  satisfied  themselves 
of  the  harmony  of  what  they  call  their  natural  and 
revealed  ideas  of  God  —  that  is,  the  harmony  be- 
tween the  conception  of  a  Creator  making  the  world 
by  a  specific  act,  as  a  man  makes  a  watch,  and  the 
account  in  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  —  than  Sci- 
ence steps  in  and  says,  "With  my  divining-rod,  I 
have  read  the  secrets  of  the  earth, —  yea,  the  deep 
things  of  God  that  were  written  on  the  stones  and 
in  the  great  mountains  ages  before  the  Twelve 
Tables  of  Moses'  Law  were  made  or  Adam  became 
a  living  soul ;  and  I  declare  unto  you  that  neither  in 
six  days  nor  in  six  thousand  thousand  was  the  earth 
created,  and  that  by  no  specific,  clearly  defined  acts, 
but  through  an  almost  infinite  series  of  progressive 
stages  of  action,  did  it  come  to  its  present  form." 
Nay,  there  is  a  theory  of  the  universe,  sometimes 
stigmatized  as  an  attempt  to  account  for  creation 
without  the  hypothesis  of  a  creator,  which  asserts 
that  the  whole  universe  is  developed,  under  the 
operation  of  physical  laws,  from  a  condition  of 
simple  primordial  atoms  as  germs,  like  a  tree  from 
a  seed  or  a  bird  from  an  egg;  and  millions  upon 
millions  of  years  would  not  take  us  back  to  the 
beginning  of  the  process.  This  theory  may  not  yet 
be  scientifically  established,  but    how  soon   it  may 


40  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

be  no  one  can  tell.  And  no  religious  opinions  and 
prejudices  ought  to  stand,  or  can  stand  permanently, 
in  the  way  of  its  establishment,  if  science  can  show 
it  to  be  true.  Clearly,  then,  we  must  be  prepared 
to  change  our  conception  of  the  relation  between 
the  universe  and  Deity.  Already,  by  the  advanced 
positions  which  science  has  taken,  we  are  driven  to 
this  dilemma :  we  must  either  abandon  our  old  ana- 
logical idea  of  God  as  a  creator  and  ruler  of  the 
universe,  in  the  common  acceptation  of  those  words, 
—  an  idea  of  him  formed  from  the  nature  of  a  finite 
being, —  or  else  we  shall  be  compelled  to  place  him 
farther  and  farther  from  the  universe,  until  he  is 
banished  to  the  remotest  corner  of  conceivable 
space,  and  the  period  of  his  active  power  is  pushed 
to  the  utmost  limit  of  conceivable  time,  and  he  shall 
have  become  an  infinitesimal  rather  than  an  infinite 
Being;  and  then  will  be  fulfilled  the  prediction  of 
a  certain  school  of  philosophy,  that  religion,  as  a 
childish  superstition  of  our  race,  will,  as  the  race 
matures,  yield  up  her  sovereignty,  and  finally  disap- 
pear before  the  full  light  of  science. 

That  this  fate  will  ever  befall  humanity  at  large 
I  have  no  fears.  For,  although  no  fair  deductions  of 
science,  however  much  they  may  conflict  with  our 
religious  notions,  can  be  denied,  I  should  still  main- 
tain that  religion,  properly  conceived,  represents  the 
normal  attitude  of  the  human  soul,  and  is  not  to  be 
lost  out  of  the  world  so  long  as  human  nature  en- 
dures. Between  science  and  true  religion  there  can 
be  no  conflict :  it  is  only  our  false  religious  ideas 
that  science  winnows  away.     The  right  adjustment 


GOD    IN    NATURE 


41 


will  come  at  last.  For  the  future  of  the  race,  then, 
I  have  no  fears.  But  for  ourselves  in  the  midst  of 
the  present  conflict  between  the  old  and  the  new, — 
how  are  we,  as  individuals,  to  keep  our  own  faith  in 
the  ever-living  presence  of  Deity  fresh  and  active, 
notwithstanding  the  invincible  batteries  of  modern 
science  ?  how  save  ourselves  from  the  calamity  of 
accepting  an  atheistic  world  ?  How  shall  we  receive 
the  latest  conclusions  of  scientific  research, —  ay, 
be  ready  to  receive  all  possible  future  conclusions, 
—  and  still  with  the  old  Hebrew  proclaim  that  "the 
earth  was  without  form,  and  void,"  till  "the  Spirit 
of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters,"  or,  with 
Jesus'  religious  sensitiveness  to  natural  beauty,  see 
the  hand  of  God  in  the  gorgeous  array  of  the  lilies  ? 
My  answer  to  this  question  is  that,  contrary  to 
what  has  been  the  prevailing  teaching  of  Christian 
theology,  we  mast  bring  God  back  into  the  tmiverse. 
We  must  conceive  of  Deity  as  in  nature, —  not  simply 
as  at  the  beginning  of  it  or  as  over  it,  but  as  in  it ; 
as  a  power  pervading  its  laws,  energies,  unfoldment, 
life.  Science  is  no  atheist.  It  has  no  conflict  with 
the  existence  of  Deity, —  only  with  our  analogical  con- 
ception of  him  as  creator  of  the  world,  according  to 
a  pre-arranged  plan,  in  a  definite  period  of  time,  and 
by  a  definite  series  of  acts,  as  a  great  Machinist. 
Science  finds  everywhere  gradation,  development, 
progress  from  cause  to  effect, —  a  law  of  evolution 
instead  of  a  miracle ;  but  it,  none  the  less,  every- 
where finds  that  incomprehensible  power  which  re- 
ligion has  named  Deity.  Wherever  we  find  law, 
wherever  we  find  order  and  system  and  beauty,  there 


42  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

we  find  elements  in  their  very  nature  eternal,  divine. 
In  the  orbits  of  the  stars,  in  the  budding  and  flower- 
ing of  trees,  in  the  upspringing  grass  and  ripening 
fruit,  in  the  strata  of  the  mountain  ranges,  in  the 
speechless  sublimity  of  the  Alps  and  the  spoken 
sublimity  of  the  ocean, —  in  short,  wherever  in  nat- 
ure the  imaginative  or  the  scientific  eye  be  cast,  we 
are  reading  no  past  thought  of  a  distant,  historic 
Deity,  but  standing  face  to  face  with  the  vital  po- 
tency of  a  present  Omnipotence.  Science  opens 
a  way  into  the  universe, —  not  that  God  may  go  out, 
but  that  we  may  see  him  all  the  more  clearly  there. 

And,  first,  we  are  to  bring  God  back  into  the  uni- 
verse by  asserting  his  immanence  in  matter.  And 
by  this  I  mean  something  more  than  that  he  is  im- 
manent in  the  material  universe.  I  do  not  mean 
that  the  universe  is  made,  as  it  were,  something  apart 
from  him,  and  that  then  he  as  Spirit  flows  in  to  dwell 
in  it ;  nor,  again,  that  chaotic  matter  first  exists  as 
something  apart  from  him,  into  which  a  vitalizing 
divine  Spirit  is  afterwards  infused.  But  I  mean  that 
matter  is  by  its  very  nature  penetrated  and  pos- 
sessed by  a  divine  energy ;  that  it  is  not  an  absolute 
creation,  not  a  beginning  de  novo,  but  a  manifestation 
of,  or  issue  from,  the  one  eternal  substance  of  Deity ; 
and  that,  could  we  get  back  behind  all  specific 
forms  of  matter  to  its  primordial  essence,  we  should 
find  it  an  inherent,  eternal  part  of  the  divine  nature. 
It  is  impossible  for  our  minds  to  conceive  of  the 
absolute  creation  or  annihilation  of  matter.  Every 
existing,  every  possible  form  of  matter  is  subject  to 
change, —  to  beginning  and  end.     Decay,  departure,. 


GOD    IN    NATURE  43 

death,  as  also  new  forms  of  life,  are  all  around  us. 
The  rock  crumbles  to  pieces  and  is  converted  to 
soil,  and  by  and  by,  in  another  form,  its  particles 
are  drawn  up  to  color  the  rose  or  to  flavor  our  fruit ; 
mountains  are  reared  and  worn  again  to  plains ;  even 
the  stars,  our  emblem  of  eternity,  are  sometimes  lost 
from  their  courses.  But,  in  all  this  round  of  endless 
change,  not  one  atom  of  matter  is  ever  lost ;  nor 
can  we  conceive  how  even  Omnipotence  can  destroy 
it  or  create.  There  seems,  in  fact,  to  be  no  reason, 
either  analogical  or  ontological,  or  from  the  human 
consciousness,  for  supposing  that  matter  in  its  es- 
sence is  not  equally  eternal  with  spirit,  or  mind. 
Consciousness  gives  us  no  idea  of  the  absolute  cau- 
sation of  matter,  but  only  of  mind  acting  upon  matter 
already  existing.  The  greatest  a  priori  reasoners 
have  affirmed  the  eternity  of  matter.  Even  though 
we  were  to  accept  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  as 
a  literal  account  of  the  process  of  creation,  we  do  not 
get  beyond  the  creation  of  the  existing  world, —  that 
is,  the  beginning  of  a  certain  order,  or  of  determinate 
forms,  of  matter,  and  not  the  absolute  origin  of  mat- 
ter itself ;  while  experience  and  analogy  both  go  to 
show  that  matter  — if,  indeed,  it  be  not  necessary  to 
the  existence  of  spirit  —  is,  at  least  to  our  human 
comprehension,  necessary  to  its  manifestation  and 
expression. 

I  would  say,  therefore,  that  spirit  and  matter  are, 
in  their  essence,  equally  eternal,  and  equally  ele- 
ments in  the  primal  origin  of  things.  We  might 
call  the  one  the  active,  the  other  the  passive  side  of 
the  divine  nature.     In  absolute  Being,  or  God,  we 


44  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

may  conceive  that  the  two  coexist  in  perfect  unity, 
making  indeed  one  substance ;  and,  in  any  form  of 
manifested  being,  the  two  must  be  wedded  before 
spirit  can  come  to  personal  consciousness  or  give 
any  other  utterance  of  itself.  Without  matter,  spirit 
could  never  be  organized  into  soul :  without  spirit, 
matter  would  remain  forever  "without  form,  and 
void."  * 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  key  to  the  true  process 
of  creation, —  still,  for  convenience,  using  the  word 
"  creation,"  though  the  idea  be  essentially  changed  ; 
and  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  childish  consid- 
ered as  science,  becomes  sublime,  considered  as 
a  poetic  representation  of  creative  activity.  "The 
Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters." 
Spirit  is  pictured  as  brooding  over  the  chaotic  mass 
of  matter.  It  moves  upon  chaos  ;  and,  behold,  the 
chaotic  mass  takes  shape,  and  separates  into  a 
myriad  forms  of  life  and  beauty.  The  upper  and  the 
nether  firmaments,  stars  and  planets,  land  and  seas, 
herb,  grass,  and  tree,  fish,  bird,  and  beast,  all  come, 
through  the  slow  gradation  of  ages,  in  their  order ; 
and  all  in  some  sort  prefigure,  and  prepare  the  way 
for,  something  higher,  higher  yet,  till  we  come  to 
man.  Creation,  beginning  with  the  primal  germ  of 
being,  is  the  action  of  spirit,  or  mental  energy,  upon 
matter,  by  which  matter  becomes  organized  into 
various  forms  of  being,  activity,  and  life.  It  is  only, 
indeed,  with  regard  to  our   human    comprehension, 


♦Infinite  Being,  as  Spinoza  maintained,  may  have  many  other  attributes;  but 
these  two,  mind  and  matter,  are  the  only  ones  that  come  within  human  cognizance. 


GOD    IN    NATURE  45 

that  we  speak  of  its  having  a  beginning.  With  ref- 
erence to  absolute  Being  and  the  whole  infinity  of 
things,  creation  can  have  no  beginning  and  no  end. 
It  is  only  a  term  to  mark  a  certain  change  of  form, 
—  a  kind  of  change  which  is  going  on  from  everlast- 
ing to  everlasting.  Spirit,  by  its  very  nature,  is  an 
organizing,  vitalizing  force.  By  its  own  inherent 
impulse,  it  must  ever  seek  to  express  itself  in  law, 
symmetry,  order,  and  life.  And  the  whole  history 
of  the  material  universe  may  be  summed  up  as  the 
effort  of  spirit  to  possess  and  vitalize  matter,  and 
so  to  organize  itself  in  material  forms. 

Hence,  as  a  second  means  through  which  we  are 
to  keep  our  faith  fresh  in  the  presence  of  God  in 
nature,  we  are  to  consider  him  as  manifested  in 
the  laws  of  nature.  Christian  theology  has  laid  so 
much  stress  upon  the  supernatural  as  the  peculiar 
method  of  divine  manifestation  that  it  has  tended 
to  establish,  has  in  fact  directly  inculcated,  the  doc- 
trine that  the  regular  and  ordinary  operations  of 
nature  are  less  immediate  revelations  of  the  divine 
character ;  that  what  we  call  natural  physical  laws 
were  ordained,  indeed,  of  God  in  the  beginning,  yet 
now  only  in  a  distant  and  secondary  way  execute  his 
intent.  But,  in  reality,  when  science  has  revealed  to 
us  a  law  or  taught  us  to  observe  a  method  of  nature, 
we  have  reached  no  past  thought  or  plan  of  Deity, 
but  his  present  action.  What  we  name  the  plan  of 
the  universe  is  no  fore-thought  of  God,  but  our  after- 
thought. The  laws  of  nature  are  no  mould  into 
which  the  past  thought  of  the  Almighty  has  been 
run,    but   the   immediate   outgoing   of    his    present 


46  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

energy,  the  divine  purpose  and  thought  in  process 
of  action  at  this  very  moment.  Every  new  physical 
law  discovered,  instead  of  being  another  secondary 
cause  and  so  removing  the  great  First  Cause  still 
farther  off,  ushers  us,  in  fact,  into  the  more  imme- 
diate presence  of  divine  power.  Science  may  speak 
of  secondary  causes,  but  to  Religion  there  is  no  such 
thing.  Where  Science  shrinks  from  naming  it, 
Religion  recognizes  the  omnipresent,  all-pervading 
One,  bows  its  head,  and  adores. 

And  so,  while  we  have  escaped  their  errors,  we 
may  still  have  all  the  advantages  of  the  old  relig- 
ions. We  may  hold  to  the  divine  unity,  and  yet  not 
lose  the  more  practical  doctrine  of  the  divine  uni- 
versality. Nature,  though  no  longer  peopled  with 
divinities,  is  filled,  inspired  with  Divinity.  One  om- 
nipresent Power  pervades  and  energizes  all  things. 
We  do  not  call  him  Neptune,  but  the  same  Deity 
still  controls  the  tidal  waves  and  rules  the  sea.  The 
offices  of  Ceres  and  Aurora,  of  all  benign,  all  fatherly 
and  motherly  providences,  are  henceforth  combined 
in  one  great  Love  that  streams  forever  through  the 
universe.  One  power  clothes  the  fields  with  sum- 
mer green  and  mantles  them  with  winter  snow ; 
brings  the  seasons  in  their  order,  and  provides 
tender  care  for  every  great  and  every  little  thing ; 
moulds  the  great  orbs  of  the  stars  ;  paints  no  less 
the  lily's  leaf  and  the  passing  cloud. 

Do  we  ask  at  once  for  absolute  perfection, —  that 
all  disorders,  both  from  man  and  nature,  be  at  once 
discarded  ?  We  ask  for  an  impossibility,  for  a  finite 
and  temporal  infinity.     Perfection  is  our  aspiration  : 


GOD    IN    NATURE  47 

toward  that,  the  whole  universe  is  advancing;  and 
infinite  wisdom  and  infinite  benevolence  are  justified 
so  long  as  the  aim  and  movement  of  things  are 
upward. 

September  8,  1861. 


IV. 
MERCY   AND   JUDGMENT. 

"Their  thoughts  the  meanwhile  accusing  or  else  excusing  one 
another." — Rom.  ii.,  15. 

The  moral  integrity  of  human  society  is  kept,  in 
great  measure,  by  the  reciprocal  action  of  the  two 
sentiments,  justice  and  mercy.  No  individual,  per- 
haps, can  ever  really  forgive  himself  for  any  lapse  in 
his  own  conduct  from  the  strict  line  of  rectitude  ; 
but,  with  regard  to  one  another's  conduct,  we  are  not 
only  made  judges,  but  have  the  power  also  of  par- 
don. More  than  this  :  we  are  forbidden  to  judge, 
unless  our  judgment  be  tempered  with  mercy.  This, 
I  take  it,  is  the  meaning  of  what  both  Jesus  and 
Paul  say  with  reference  to  judging  the  character  of 
others  ;  for,  so  long  as  we  are  endowed  with  a  moral 
sense, —  that  is,  so  long  as  we  are  human, —  it  is  im- 
possible that  we  should  make  absolutely  no  judgment 
of  one  another's  conduct.  We  are  so  constituted  by 
nature  that  we  are  necessarily  judges  of  each  other. 
It  is,  indeed,  by  this  interaction  of  conscience  upon 
conscience  that  the  moral  education  of  society  pro- 
ceeds :  only,  it  is  provided  that,  as  we  are  to  judge 
one  another,  so  we  are  to  forgive  one  another ;  as 
every  man's  conscience  is  to  exact  entire  justice 
from  every  other  man,  so  every  man's  heart  is  to  be 


MERCY    AND   JUDGMENT  49 

ready  with  pity  and  pardon  for  another's  frailty. 
Judgment  is  necessary,  but  mercy  is  to  "rejoice 
against  judgment";  "for  he  shall  have  judgment 
without  mercy  that  hath  showed  no  mercy." 

In  the  common  order  of  things  in  human  society, 
we  see  continually  how  these  two  forces  are  made  to 
balance  and  regulate  each  other.  Justice  and  mercy, 
exaction  and  forgiveness,  penalty  and  pardon,  ac- 
cusation and  excusation,  the  father's  law,  the 
mother's  love, —  between  these  two  poles  flow  the 
moral  life-currents  of  humanity.  That  action  would 
be  absolutely  right  which  should  be  vitalized  alike 
from  both  of  these  sources, —  which  should  combine 
justice  and  mercy  in  such  perfect  proportions  that 
they  should  flow  into  one  sentiment  and  be  undistin- 
guishable  from  each  other;  which  should1  be  kind 
because  it  is  just,  and  just  because  it  is  kind.  In 
the  last  analysis  of  moral  issues,  the  action  which  is 
conformed  to  the  strictest  equity  is  the  highest  be- 
nignity. With  absolute  Being,  we  can  conceive  no 
conflict  between  justice  and  tenderness.  In  a  per- 
fect Being,  justice  would  be  but  the  impartial  distri- 
bution of  love. 

But,  in  man,  these  two  sentiments  are  not  yet 
brought  to  this  perfect  oneness.  Both  are  present, 
and  both  are  necessary  to  the  well-being  of  society  ; 
but  the  moral  balance  between  them  is  preserved  by 
their  action  and  reaction  upon  each  other.  The 
exactions  of  justice  become  sometimes  severe. 
Then  mercy  pleads,  often  with  a  mistaken  tender- 
ness,—  with  blind  excess  of  good  will  doing  a  wrong, 
which    only  a    severer   equity  can   set   right    again. 


50  TWENTY-FIVE   SERMONS 

And  so  there  is  conflict,  struggling  of  force  with  force : 
we  accuse  and  yet  excuse  one  another ;  but,  by  and 
by,  justice  gets  done,  and  mercy  also  triumphs. 

Society  is  most  healthy  when  these  two  forces  are 
most  nearly  balanced, —  when  mercy  follows  most 
swiftly  upon  severity,  or,  better,  when  the  spirit  of 
love  goes  along  with  the  spirit  of  accusation.  The 
scribes  and  Pharisees  would  have  left  the  woman 
whom  they  accused  of  sin  fallen  and  hopeless. 
Jesus  lifted  her  up,  and  said  unto  her,  "  Go,  and  sin 
no  more."  Without  looking  with  weak  indulgence 
on  the  past,  he  yet  opened  to  her  the  hopes  of  the 
future.  In  this  act,  he  shows  us  the  exquisite  mean 
between  the  moral  judgment  that  condemns  the  sin 
and  the  moral  compassion  that  reclaims  the  sinner. 
But  society  has  not  yet  learned  to  keep  this  golden 
mean.  We  are  continually  running  between  the 
two  extremes  of  unjust  severity  and  mistaken  indul- 
gence; in  one  case  exercising  judgment  without 
mercy,  in  the  other  showing  mercy  without  judg- 
ment. 

First,  we  exercise  judgment  without  mercy. 
Great,  almost  irreparable,  is  the  wrong  that  is  done 
by  condemnation  of  the  vicious  without  appeal. 
With  the  doors  of  our  houses,  we  shut  against  them 
also,  in  many  cases,  the  doors  of  repentance  and  ref- 
ormation. Keeping  them  from  the  paths  of  honest 
industry  till  they  have  established  an  honest  charac- 
ter, we  force  them  into  courses  of  dishonor,  and  give 
them  no  chance  to  win  a  good  name.  In  the  sever- 
ity of  our  judgment  upon  their  past  lives,  we  con- 
demn them  to  sin  as  a  punishment,  and  to  a  dark 


MERCY    AND   JUDGMENT  5  I 

future  of  misery  and  moral  despair ;  and  with  moral 
despair  comes  moral  ruin.  What  worse  fate  can  we 
conceive  for  a  man  who  has  run  the  ways  of  wicked- 
ness and  learned  their  barrenness,  and  now  desires 
sincerely  to  regain  his  virtue  and  his  reputation, 
than  to  find  all  the  avenues  to  virtuous  associations 
barred  against  him  ?  Suppose  that  the  prodigal  son 
in  the  parable — when,  weary  of  sin,  the  memory  of 
the  old  home  love  and  innocence  had  been  revived 
within  him,  and  he  had  resolved  to  return  to  his 
father's  house — had  found,  instead  of  the  welcome 
which  he  did  receive,  the  father's  heart  hardened 
against  him  and  the  door  closed,  and  no  opportunity 
given  him  for  expressing  his  contrition  and  making 
amends  for  the  wrong  he  had  done :  would  he  have 
been  saved?  What  burden  could  have  been  imposed 
upon  him  more  fitted  than  such  a  repulse  to  crush 
out  every  reviving  memory  and  desire  of  better 
things, —  every  aspiration  for  the  old  home  virtue 
and  pure  domestic  joys  ?  Yet  this  is  what  society  — 
society,  too,  that  is  called  Christian  —  is  doing  every 
day.  Thousands  of  human  beings  are  this  moment 
kept  in  the  degradation  of  vice,  because  no  human  ear 
will  listen  to  their  penitence  and  no  hand  is  reached 
out  to  welcome  and  aid  their  returning  footsteps. 
Nay,  their  own  fathers  and  mothers  often  suffer 
their  hearts  to  close  against  these  their  erring  chil- 
dren. I  doubt  not  there  are  those  among  the  vi- 
cious and  abandoned  of  this  city  who  would  this 
hour  gladly  go  back  to  the  pure  homes  of  their 
childhood,  if  they  could  be  sure  that  they  would  still 
find  there  a  father's  and  a  mother's  heart.     But  they 


52  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

feel  that  the  house  would  be  shut  against  them, 
that  every  honest  mode  of  livelihood  shrinks  from 
them,  that  even  this  so-called  house  of  God  is  not 
open  for  such  as  they !  God  pity  them,  for  they 
find  few  friends  and  little  pity  on  earth  ! 

On  the  other  hand,  though  judgment  without 
mercy  is  so  ruinous,  not  less  ruinous  is  mercy,  or 
compassion,  without  moral  judgment.  The  safe- 
guards of  society  are  at  once  torn  down  and  the 
whole  fabric  exposed  to  destruction,  so  soon  as  the 
vicious  are  allowed  without  question  to  stand  on 
the  same  footing  and  receive  the  same  honors  with 
the  virtuous.  We  can  do  no  greater  wrong  to  so- 
ciety than  when,  through  a  fiction  of  words,  we  call 
men  moral  by  relaxing  the  severity  of  the  moral  law. 
Without  elevating  them  in  the  least,  we  debase  the 
moral  standard  of  the  whole  community,  and  excuse 
them  from  all  effort  to  elevate  themselves.  If  men 
are  thieves,  let  us  call  them  so,  no  matter  how  high 
they  stand  in  social  position  :  only  be  sure  they  are 
thieves  before  we  call  them  so.  If  men  are  drunk- 
ards and  libertines,  let  us  give  them  those  names, 
though  they  be  members  of  cabinets  or  churches  : 
only  be  sure  that  the  accusation  is  true  before  we 
repeat  it.  Nothing  is  so  strong  an  indication  of,  as 
well  as  help  to,  the  corruption  of  public  morals  as 
the  prevalent  disposition  to  cover  up  flagrant  vices 
and  crimes  under  an  evasive  phraseology.  Let  it 
be  understood  that  a  lie  is  a  lie,  and  not  merely 
"misrepresentation"  or  "evasion," — words  that  have 
a  much  less  culpable  sound.  The  hard  word  theft, 
which  is  as  destructive  of  a  man's  pretences  to  mo- 


MERCY    AND   JUDGMENT  53 

rality,  if  it  hit  him  fairly,  as  a  well-aimed  cannon  ball 
is  fatal  to  his  body,  is  too  often  softened  into 
"embezzlement,"  "defalcation,"  "financial  irregular- 
ity,"—  weak  paper  bullets  which  do  little  execu- 
tion. If  a  boy  takes  a  loaf  of  bread  from  a  baker's 
window,  he  is  sent  to  jail  as  a  thief.  If  a  man  steals 
.a  railroad,  he  goes  at  large ;  and  a  considerable 
portion  of  society  look  upon  him  with  admiration 
for  his  financial  ability.  If  a  young  man  is  given  to 
inebriety  and  lust,  we  call  him  "a  little  wild  "  ;  and 
younger  men  and  boys  are  rather  left  with  the 
impression  that  to  be  "  a  little  wild  "  is  the  proper 
thing  for  a  young  man.  Now,  all  such  concealment 
•of  vice  under  fine  names  is  weakly  to  excuse  it ;  and 
weakly  to  excuse  vice  is  to  put  a  premium  upon  it. 
Let  us  not  deaden  the  sting  of  a  just  accusation  of 
guilt  by  words  of  velvet.  Let  us  use  the  plain 
Anglo-Saxon  terms  :  they  are  the  words  that,  true 
and  sharp  as  steel,  carry  home  to  a  man  the  real 
■meaning  of  his  deeds.  The  courtly  Latin  has  been 
used  to  tell  lies  and  cover  up  crime  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  English  language. 

We  must  make  it  understood  that  sin  is  sin,  and 
not  merely  an  inherited  taint  of  the  blood  ;  that  evil 
is  evil,  and  not  merely  a  misfortune  of  circum- 
stances ;  that  guilt  is  guilt, — to  be  got  rid  of,  not  by 
finely  worded  confessions  of  piety  and  theories  of 
substituted  punishment,  but  by  real  pain  and  strug- 
gle and  hearty  honest  work.  Let  us  not  by  any 
feeble  sentimentality  weaken  the  force  of  the  old 
law,  that  "the  way  of  the  transgressor  is  hard." 
There  are  times  when  the  greatest  unkindness  you 


54  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

could  do  a  man  would  be  to  show  him  that  you 
lightly  excuse  his  vices.  Many  a  mother  smooths 
the  road  to  ruin  for  her  sons,  because  she  overlooks 
too  readily  their  childish  faults.  It  isn't  that  she 
has  too  much  love,  too  much  heart,  but  that  her  love 
does  not  look  through  the  far-seeing  eye  of  moral 
judgment;  her  heart  is  not  what  Solomon  calls  "a 
wise  and  an  understanding  heart."  No  :  let  no  mis- 
taken tenderness,  public  or  private,  blind  us  to  the 
enormity  of  immoral  deeds.  For  very  self-preserva- 
tion, society  must  wear  the  ermine  and  sit  in  the 
seat  of  judgment.  Let  no  man  feel  that  the  eye  of 
the  community  is  not  upon  him.  Let  no  man  feel 
that  he  can  sin,  and  escape  the  court  of  public  opin- 
ion. There  may  be  forgiveness  for  him,  but  let  him 
not  feel  that  he  is  forgiven  before  he  has  been 
brought  to  trial.  The  accusation  and  the  sentence 
must  come  before  the  pardon.  If  any  will  waste 
their  substance  in  riotous  living,  let  them  know  dis- 
tinctly that  husks  must  be  their  food  and  the  swine 
their  company  ;  that  only  for  such  as  return  are  the 
feasts  and  the  joys  of  the  Father's  house. 

We  see,  then,  that  the  moral  judgment  that 
condemns  and  punishes  guilt,  and  the  moral  ten- 
derness that  overlooks  and  pardons  guilt,  are  equally 
injurious  when  they  appear  apart  from  each  other. 
Many  are  the  victims  whom  society  has  crushed 
apparently  to  moral  death  by  the  severity  of  a 
moral  judgment, —  just,  perhaps,  at  first,  but  upon 
which  no  pardoning  mercy  followed.  Equally  many 
are  the  victims  who  have  been  surfeited  to  moral 
death  by  kindness, —  who  have  been  lured  to  their 


MERCY   AND   JUDGMENT  55 

graves  by  friendly  (so  they  were  meant)  excuses 
for  their  sins.  The  problem  is  to  combine  these 
two  ;  to  be  both  just  and  kind  at  the  same  time  ; 
to  let  the  conscience  pronounce  with  unflinching 
manly  voice  the  word  guilty,  and  execute  with  firm 
hand  the  punishment,  while  the  heart  trembles  with 
its  full  motherly  burden  of  healing  and  redeeming 
love.  "Behold,"  exclaimed  St.  Paul,  "the  goodness 
and  the  severity  of  God  !  "  In  that  phrase,  we  have 
the  wondrous  unity  we  seek.  In  the  divine  laws, 
justice  and  mercy  are  brought  into  concord,  are 
atoned.  "  On  tJicm  which  fell  [i.e.,  who  sinned], 
severity ;  but  toward  thee,  goodness,  if  thou  continue 
in  his  goodness :  otherwise,  thou  also  shalt  be  c:it  off" — 
so  severely  kind  are  the  great  laws  of  God.  Very 
pitilessly  do  they  accuse  us,  if  we  violate  them  ;  for  a 
yielding  pity  would  be  our  ruin.  Very  pitilessly  do 
they  condemn  and  punish  us,  if  we  continue  in  diso- 
bedience ;  for  the  severity  of  our  punishment  is  our 
salvation.  And  yet  the  same  laws,  if  we  will  but 
turn  to  obedience,  if  we  will 'continue  in  goodness, 
are  our  consolers  and  our  healers.  While  we  are 
scourged,  we  are  blessed  ;  while  we  are  accused,  we 
are  redeemed.  Into  the  divine  laws  are  infused 
equally  the  father's  firmness  and  the  mother's  com- 
passion ;  and,  though  they  pronounce  us  sinful  and 
condemn  our  sins,  they  yet  fold  strong  arms  of  love 
around  us  to  lift  us  up  and  save. 

March  16,  1862. 


SELF-SACRIFICE. 

"Whosoever  shall  seek  to  save  his  life  shall  lose  it;  and  whosoever 
shall  lose  his  life  shall  preserve  it."  —  Luke  xvii.,  23. 

No  one  saying  of  Jesus  seems  to  have  been 
impressed  so  deeply  on  the  memory  of  his  disciples 
as  this.  Six  times  does  it  appear  in  the  Gospels  in 
nearly  the  same  words,  and  as  having  been  uttered 
on  several  different  occasions ;  while  the  same  senti- 
ment appears  in  many  other  forms,  and  is  the  key- 
note of  many  discourses.  Paradoxical  as  is  the 
sentence  in  expression,  its  meaning  is  clear.  The 
word  life,  as  every  one  must  immediately  see,  is 
used  in  two  senses  :  first,  for  the  material,  temporal 
life ;  and,  secondly,  for  the  spiritual  and  eternal  life. 
Hence,  dropping  the  form  of  paradox,  we  should  read 
the  text  thus :  Whosoever  shall  seek  to  save  his 
material  and  temporal  life  shall  lose  the  higher  and 
eternal  life  of  the  spirit ;  and  whosoever  subordi- 
nates and  stands  ready  even  to  let  go  his  material 
and  temporal  life  shall  find  the  higher  and  eternal 
spiritual  life.  In  other  words,  one  may  seek  only 
the  pleasures  and  pursuits  of  this  life  of  earth,  be 
absorbed  wholly  in  them  ;  but,  if  so,  then  this  life 
of  earth  is  his  all.  To  say  nothing  of  what  is  possible 
hereafter,  here,  at  least,  he  loses  the  life  of  heaven, — 


SELF-SACRIFICE  5/ 

loses  the  life  of  those  nobler  principles,  pursuits, 
and  joys  that  properly  belong  to  spiritual  and  moral 
beings.  On  the  other  hand,  if  one's  life  is  entirely 
subordinated  to,  swallowed  up,  and  lost  in  these  high 
motives  of  the  spirit,  then,  though  he  may  lose  what 
the  world  regards. as  the  necessities  and  triumphs 
of  earthly  success,  he  finds  the  fairer  fortune,  even 
here  upon  the  earth,  of  that  life  which  has  no  end. 

In  my  last  discourse,  I  spoke  of  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ, —  of  the  real  efficacy  of  his  blood  toward 
the  redemption  of  the  world.  Contrary  to  the 
customary  theological  teaching,  I  endeavored  to 
show  how  his  death,  with  its  results,  falls  into  natural 
harmony  with  the  great  providential  laws  of  human 
progress  ;  and,  explaining  the  doctrine  of  his  sacri- 
fice thus,  we  saw  how  it  culminated  in  this  saying 
which  I  have  taken  for  my  text  to-day, —  "  Whoso- 
ever is  ready  to  lose  his  life  shall  find  it."  That  is, 
the  doctrine  taught  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  the 
doctrine  of  self-sacrifice, —  rest  not  for  salvation  in 
the  sacrifices  made  for  yon,  but  in  the  sacrifices  you 
make ;  and  it  is  to  this  subject,  the  true  doctrine 
of  self-sacrifice,  that  I  wish  to  call  your  attention  in 
the  present  discourse. 

Our  thoughts  at  a  time  like  this  turn  naturally, 
turn  by  necessity,  to  the  topic  of  sacrifice.  When 
every  week  is  bringing  us  intelligence  of  battle-fields, 
with  their  marvellous  tales  of  endurance  and  heroism, 
their  horrors  of  carnage  and  blood,  with  a  strange 
blending  of  a  beautiful  and  divine  tenderness  there- 
with, we  are  led  inevitably  to  the  question,  What  is 
the  meaning  of  all  this  destruction  and  agony  and 


58  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

blood?  Is  there  not  some  universal  law  by  which 
the  world  is  spiritually  redeemed  through  suffering 
and  self-sacrifice?  We  can  hardly,  I  think,  however 
closely  we  may  be  cased  in  the  old  dogmas  of  atone- 
ment and  redemption  by  blood,  go  through  with  the 
scenes  of  this  national  conflict  without  putting  a 
more  universal  and  rational  idea  into  these  doctrines  ; 
while  some  of  us,  perhaps,  will  be  brought  to  see 
a  greater  moral  efficacy  in  the  sacrifice  of  physical 
life  than  we  have  been  wont  heretofore  to  believe  in. 
My  own  thoughts  on  this  subject  I  find  strikingly 
expressed  by  one  *  who  went  over  the  battle-field  of 
Fort  Donelson  soon  after  that  terrible  contest ;  and, 
though  the  printed  sermon  in  which  they  are  con- 
tained has  doubtless  been  read  by  many  of  you, 
I  will  yet  quote  the  exact  words,  because  they  have 
more  vivacity  coming  from  one  who  spoke  of  what 
he  himself  saw.  "As  I  went  over  this  battle-field," 
he  says,  "  and  thought  on  the  dead  heroes  and  of  all 
they  died  for,  I  kept  repeating  over  each  one,  '  He 
gave  his  life  a  ransom  for  many ' ;  and  I  wondered, 
when  I  thought  of  how  we  had  all  gone  astray  as 
a  people,  and  how  inevitable  this  war  had  become, 
in  consequence,  as  the  final  test  of  the  two  great 
antagonisms,  whether  it  may  not  be  true  in  our 
national  affairs  as  in  a  more  universal  sense, — '  with 
out  the  shedding  of  blood  there  is  no  remission  of 
sins.'  And  so,  by  consequence,  every  true  hero 
fallen  in  this  struggle  for  the  right  is  also  a  saviour 
to  the  nation  and  the  race."  And  do  we  not  all  feel 
that  there  is  a  deep  truth  in  this  statement,  and  that 

♦Robert  Collyer,  Unitarian  Mo7ithly Journal,  April,  1862. 


SELF-SACRIFICE  59 

the  language  is  as  reverent  as  it  is  true  and  tender  ? 
Not  indeed  that  every  soldier  who  falls  for  a  right- 
eous cause  is  put  on  the  same  level  with  Jesus,  but 
that  both  fall  by  the  same  law  of  redemption  through 
sacrifice.     The  rudest  stone  thrown   into  the  air  falls 
to  the   earth   by  the   same   law  that  draws   Jupiter 
through  the  infinite  spaces  of  the  heavens,  but  that 
is  not  to  put  the  stone  on  the  same  grade  of  exist- 
ence with  the  planet.     What  is  meant  is  that  who- 
ever gives  his  life  for  the  right  enters  by  that  act, 
according  to  the   elevation  of   his   motive,  into  the 
spirit  of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ,  and  helps,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  worth  of  his  life,  to  redeem  the  world  from 
error  and  from  sin.     The  more  precious  the  life,  the 
more  valuable  becomes  the  testimony,  the  greater  the 
price  ;  and  the  greater  also  —  for  divine  providence 
balances  every  account  with  perfect  exactness —the 
moral  value  which  the  world  receives  in  return  :  the 
costlier  the  blood,  the  greater  the  redemption.     Yet 
we   may   be   allowed    to   feel    that    not    even    the 
humblest  and  obscurest  man  who  gives  his  life  for 
the  right  falls  in  vain.      And  I  speak    not   now  of 
what  will  be  attained  by  a  victory  of  arms,  but  of 
the  moral  worth  of  the  mere   act  of  sacrifice.     No 
sacrifice,  not  even  the  smallest,  falls  fruitless.     The 
poorest  woman,  who  with  her  tears  sends  forth  her 
sons  to  battle,  does  something  for  the  remission  of 
our  country's  sins ;  and   the  blood  of  the  unnamed 
private   soldiers,  trickling  unnoticed   and  neglected 
into  the  soil  where  they  bravely  fell,  shall  yet  spring 
up   a   fountain   of  pure   water,  clear   as    crystal,  to 
cleanse  us  from  the  foulest  iniquities. 


60  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

Paul  somewhere  teaches  the  doctrine  that,  by  the 
death  of  Jesus,  God's  righteousness  was  made  mani- 
fest ;  that,  by  permitting  so  holy  and  perfect  a  being 
to  suffer  a  cruel  and  ignominious  death  at  the  hands 
of  evil  men,  God  showed  his  love  of  goodness  and 
his  hatred  of  sin.  In  ordinary  times,  it  seems  a 
strange,  dark  doctrine  ;  and  I  remember  when,  on 
one  occasion,  our  theological  professor,  by  a  lapsus 
linguae,  reversed  the  phrases,  and  said,  "  Paul  taught 
that  God,  by  permitting  the  violent  death  of  so  holy 
a  being  as  Christ,  showed  his  love  of  sin  and  hatred 
of  goodness,"  a  member  of  the  class  exclaimed  that 
that  was  a  more  logical  statement  than  the  one 
he  meant  to  make.  And  so  at  first  sight  it  seems. 
We  are  at  least  moved  to  exclaim :  "  If  God  had 
wished  to  manifest  his  righteousness,  would  he 
not  have  saved  the  righteous  being,  and  brought 
the  guilty  to  destruction  ?  How,  pray,  did  he  show 
his  love  of  goodness  by  permitting  goodness  to  be 
sacrificed,  or  his  hatred  of  sin  when  he  allowed  sin 
to  triumph  ? "  But  the  criticism,  though  natural, 
is  superficial.  Paul  spoke  out  of  a  deep  and  extraor- 
dinary experience,  and  it  is  only  when  events  call 
forth  a  deeper  life  than  we  commonly  know  in  our 
own  souls  that  we  understand  the  transcendent 
truth  of  his  thought.  That  truth,  I  think,  is  made 
clear  to  us  now.  God's  righteousness  is  manifested 
by  the  greatness  of  the  sacrifices  which  he  demands 
shall  be  made  for  it.  He  shows  his  love  of  good- 
ness by  infusing  into  human  hearts  a  spirit  which  is 
willing  and  firm  to  endure  the  most  cruel  agony 
and  death  rather  than  to  forswear  the  good  and  the 


SELF-SACRIFICE  6 1 

true.  He  shows  his  abhorrence  of  evil  by  nerving 
human  souls  with  a  strength  almost  omnipotent, 
and  capable  of  bearing  tortures  unspeakable  rather 
than  to  yield  to  the  seductions  of  evil.  It  is  in 
morals  as  in  material  things  :  value  is  measured  by 
the  price  paid. 

So,  when  God  calls  upon  men  to  give  for  the 
truth,  to  give  for  righteousness,  those  things  which 
are  counted  the  dearest  among  earthly  possessions, 
he  shows  that  he  counts  truth  and  righteousness  as 
dearer  than  all  things  else.  Wealth  is  dear :  men 
will  toil  early  and  late  for  it ;  and,  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent, we  are  bid  by  the  divine  laws  to  seek  it  for 
the  better  comfort  of  our  bodies  and  the  higher  re- 
finement of  our  minds.  But  the  same  divine  laws 
tell  us  clearly  that  virtue  is  dearer,  for  you*must  pay 
the  whole  price  of  your  wealth  rather  than  lose  your 
virtue.  Home  and  family  are  dear :  what,  indeed, 
is  more  precious  than  these  little  household  struct- 
ures which  your  hearts  have  builded  ?  They  are 
dearer  than  your  wealth,  for  you  seek  wealth  that 
you  may  adorn  and  elevate  these ;  and  you  instinc- 
tively call  the  man  worse  than  mean  who  lets  his 
dollars  stand  between  him  and  his  home.  And  yet 
you  let  go  home  and  family,  when  you  recognize  a 
higher  voice  calling  you  to  service  in  the  broader 
household  of  your  country  or  humanity.  You  tear 
yourself  from  the  cradle  of  your  own  child  that  you 
may  save  the  liberties  of  strangers'  children.  Wife, 
sister,  father,  mother, —  you  give  them  all  up  ;  for  it 
is  better  that  you  see  them  in  want,  or  see  them  no 
more,  than  that  all  the  households  in  the  land  should 


02  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

be  imperilled  by  the  outbreak  of  national  wickedness, 
or  continue  to  stand  under  the  traitorous  protection 
of  a  flag  stained  with  crime  against  domestic  sanc- 
tity. Life  is  dear, —  this  life  of  the  body  on  the 
earth.  Instinctively,  we  cling  to  it.  We  let  go 
everything  that  we  have  gained  and  toiled  for  a 
whole  life  long  rather  than  let  go  the  life  itself.  Of 
all  temporal  things,  it  is  counted  dearest ;  and,  as 
men  advance  in  civilization,  they  grow  into  the  opin- 
ion that  life,  of  all  things,  is  sacred  and  inviolable. 
We  may,  under  certain  conditions,  take  men's  prop- 
erty, we  may  take  them  from  their  homes,  we  may 
take  their  liberties,  but  life  is  the  last  thing  we  can 
take ;  and  many  there  are  who  deny  that  the  right 
ever  comes  to  man  to  take  it  at  all.  Life,  then,  is 
held  to  be  the  most  precious  and  inviolable  of 
human  possessions.  But  see  what  vast  numbers 
there  have  been  and  are  —  the  brave  army  of  sol- 
diers and  the  still  braver  army  of  martyrs  —  who 
hesitate  not  to  pay  this  highest  price  of  all  for  the 
sake  of  truth.  So  is  it  shown  that  truth,  that  prin- 
ciples of  right,  are  valued  above  all  things, —  above 
wealth,  above  home  and  family,  above  life. 

And  thus  it  is  that  by  the  sacrifice  of  these 
things  —  by  the  sacrifices  and  sufferings  and  death 
of  the  righteous  —  the  righteousness  of  God  is  made 
manifest.  By  the  value  of  the  things  we  are  called 
upon,  by  our  higher  natures,  to  give  rather  than  to 
yield  the  truth,  or  in  order  to  ransom  us  from  evil, 
does  God  show  the  price  he  sets  upon  goodness  and 
his  abhorrence  of  iniquity.  "  What  shall  a  man 
give,"  exclaimed  Jesus,  "in  exchange  for  his  soul?" 


SELF-SACRIFICE  6$ 

No  answer  was  needed,  for  every  true  man's  heart 
answers  that  there  is  nothing  costly  enough  to 
purchase  that.  The  kingliest  blood,  the  manliest 
form  of  flesh,  cannot  be  weighed  for  a  moment 
against  the  imperishable  virtues  and  principles  of 
the  immortal  spirit.  Was  the  worth  of  Jesus'  life 
inestimable  ?  How  much  more  inestimable,  then, 
the  worth  of  that  truth,  of  those  principles,  for  the 
sake  of  which  all  the  wealth  and  beauty  of  that 
life  were  given !  So  we  are  learning  now,  through 
the  severe  lesson  of  tears  and  blood,  how  the  ever- 
lasting righteousness  of  God  may  be  manifested, 
not  only  by  life,  but  by  the  sacrifice  of  life.  We 
are  learning,  what  perhaps  in  our  ease  and  prosper- 
ity we  were  in  danger  of  forgetting,  that  there  are 
many  things  higher  and  holier  than  this  life  of  flesh, 
and  many  things  which  we  had  better  die  rather 
than  do  or  allow  to  be  done.  And  we  are  learning 
also,  through  the  costliness  of  the  sacrifice,  the 
infinite  worth  of  those  things  for  which  the  sacri- 
fice is  made, —  national  justice  and  righteousness 
and  purity.  What,  indeed,  could  better  teach  us  the 
value  that  God  sets  upon  these  things  than  the 
greatness  of  the  price  we  are  now  called  to  pay  for 
them  ?  That  the  most  precious  blood  of  the  race 
is  being  poured  out  in  ransom  ;  that  the  bone  and 
sinew  of  the  nation  are  being  laid  upon  its  altar ; 
that  lives  of  the  richest  promise, —  the  pride  of  our 
homes,  the  pride  of  our  colleges, —  lives  rich  in  cult- 
ure, in  virtue,  of  the  noblest  manhood  and  the  saintli- 
est  purity, —  are  being  freely  offered  up  in  sacrifice, — 
herein,  my  friends,  does  God  reveal  to  us  the  ines- 


64  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

timable  worth  of  that  national  purification  and  of 
those  eternal  principles  of  righteousness  for  which 
this  most  precious  of  all  offerings  is  being  made. 
By  the  value  of  the  life  given  may  we  measure  the 
value  of  that  higher  life  which  is  to  be  obtained. 

If  we  were  to  state  the  reason,  then,  of  the  ra- 
tional Christian  doctrine  of  self-sacrifice,  it  would  be 
this  :  that  no  private  life  can  be  of  so  much  impor- 
tance as  the  life  of  humanity ;  no  personal  ends 
can  stand  in  the  way  of  universal ;  no  temporal, 
physical  good  is  of  any  worth,  which  cannot  be  held 
consistently  with  eternal  principles  of  right.  The 
doctrine  does  not  militate  against  the  just  claims  of 
individuality.  It  enjoins  no  sacrifice  of  our  personal 
being,  no  surrender  of  that  sacred  entity  within 
us  which  we  call  our  selfhood.  Rather  does  it  draw 
the  line  in  our  being  between  things  temporal  and 
things  eternal,  between  material  things  and  spiritual 
things,  and  bid  us  seek  our  life  and  ground  our 
being  in  those  things  that  are  eternal  and  spiritual. 
Instead  of  demanding  the  sacrifice  of  our  individu- 
ality, it  bids  us  find  it  in  a  higher  sphere.  Letting 
go  all  merely  private  and  selfish  ends  and  aims,  our 
being  re-comes  to  us  enlarged  by  universal  relations 
and  elevated  into  divine  and  everlasting  proportions. 
Whether  we  continue  to  wear  this  body  of  flesh  or 
whether  it  fall  away, —  in  the  body  or  out  of  the 
body, —  it  is  of  little  moment.  The  personal  exist- 
ence does  not  necessarily  cease :  the  life  goes  on, 
only  a  certain  manifestation  of  it  vanishes. 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  goodness,  man- 
hood, culture,  are    not    sacrificed,   only  certain  per- 


SELF-SACRIFICE  65 

sonal  and  temporal  manifestations  thereof ;    but  the 
sublime     qualities     themselves    are    saved.      Good 
men  die,  but  goodness  survives  :  good  men  die,  that 
goodness  may  survive.     Did  holiness  expire  on  the 
cross   of   Christ  ?     Did  wickedness    triumph    in    his 
death  ?      Nay,    rather     did    holiness    appear    more 
holy.     Jesus,   lifted    upon    the   cross,    drew  all  men 
unto   him ;    while   wickedness   was    stripped    of   its 
disguises   and  revealed   in  its  real  form,  so   odious 
that  men  shrank  from  it  and  could  not   help  then 
but    choose   the   truth.     Are   the   virtues    of    your 
friends  buried   in    their  graves?     Nay,  rather   does 
death   transfigure   to   your  vision   their  characters, 
so   that    the    grave    generously   veils    their   faults, 
while  it  allows  their  virtues  to  spring  up  with  a  di- 
viner grace  and  beauty.     Of  our  soldiers,  too,  who 
fall  in  battle  for  the  redemption  of  the  nation,  we 
forget  the  evil,  and  remember  only  that  they  were 
patriots  and  heroes.     Blest  mode  of  death,  by  which 
a  man's  sins  are  washed  from  memory  by  his  own 
blood,    and    only   his    virtues  —  his    single    virtue, 
perhaps  —  survive  in  remembrance   to  describe    his 
character  and  give  example  to  the  world !     And,  as 
it  seems  to  our  vision,  so  doubtless  it  is  in  reality. 
No   man,  however  worthless    and   ignoble   he   may 
have  been,  can  give  his  life  for  a  great  cause  with- 
out feeling   that   with   his   body  something   of   his 
low  selfishness  drops  off  from  him ;  while  a  higher 
life,  from   the  cause   he  surfers  for,  is  infused  into 
his  spirit.     This,  too,  must  be  the  experience,  not 
only  of   those  who  fall  in  the  terrible  contest,  but 
of  those  who,  though  ready  to  fall,  are  yet  spared. 


66  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

It  is  impossible  but  that  something  of  the  deeper 
and  mysterious  verities  of  life  should  have  been  re- 
vealed to  them.  The  same  observer  whom  I  have 
already  quoted  says  again  :  "  I  noticed  one  feature 
in  this  camp  that  I  never  saw  before :  the  men  do 
not  swear  and  use  profane  words  as  they  used  to  do. 
There  is  a  little  touch  of  seriousness  about  them. 
They  have  taken  the  Eternal  Name  for  common 
purposes  a  thousand  times;  and  we  feel  as  if  we 
could  say  with  Paul,  '  The  times  of  this  ignorance 
God  passed  by.'  But  on  that  fearful  day,  when 
judgment-fires  were  all  aflame,  a  voice  said,  'Be 
still,  and  know  that  I  am  God '  ;  and  they  are  still 
under  the  shadow  of  that  awful  name."  Thus  it  is 
that  by  sacrifice  of  this  life  of  earth,  even  by  the 
agony  and  sweat  and  blood  of  the  battle-field,  the 
higher  verities  of  God  and  eternity  are  revealed. 

This  doctrine  of  self-sacrifice  is  not  only  the 
■doctrine  of  Christianity,  but  the  doctrine  of  human 
nature.  There  is  within  us  all,  if  we  will  but  heed 
it,  the  germ  of  a  natural  instinct — let  us  call  it 
divine  —  which  prompts  us  to  give  ourselves  for 
others  ;  and,  however  far  short  most  of  us  may  fall 
of  its  requirements,  there  is  yet,  I  think,  no  man 
sunk  so  low  in  selfishness  who  will  not  appreciate 
and  applaud  a  pure  act  of  self-sacrifice  performed 
by  another.  Let  a  stranger — one  entirely  unknown 
to  the  whole  community — rush  into  the  street, 
exposing  his  own  life  in  order  to  snatch  a  child 
from  being  trampled  to  death  by  a  frenzied  horse, 
and  instantly  you  know  that  stranger  has  a  noble 
manhood,  and  you  wish   to  take  him  by  the  hand 


SELF-SACRIFICE  6j 

and  call  him  brother ;  and  in  all  the  crowd  of  by- 
standers is  there  one  so  mean,  so  insensible  to  every 
manly  sentiment,  as  not  instinctively  to  pray  that 
he  might  have  the  same  brave  and  self-forgetful 
spirit  ?  Human  nature  at  its  inmost  heart  is  true, 
and  teaches  the  same  gospel  as  did  Jesus, —  "  not  to 
be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister";  not  to  save, 
but  to  give  ourselves.  See  how  friend  will  give 
himself  for  friend.  See  how,  in  every  true  marriage 
relation,  the  husband  sacrifices  himself  for  his  wife 
and  wife  for  husband.  See  how  father  and  mother 
give  themselves  unweariedly  for  their  children. 
What,  indeed,  will  not  a  mother  do  to  save  her 
child?  Her  own  life,  mature  and  rich  in  wom- 
anly usefulness,  is  not  so  precious  to  her  as  that 
yet  unfolded  bud  of  life  in  her  arms.  The  world 
outside  might  say,  Better  that  the  child  be  sacrificed 
than  the  mother.  But  she  judges  and  acts  by  a 
diviner  instinct,  and  knows  that,  though  she  loses 
her  life,  she  finds  a  higher  life  in  the  action  of  that 
love  that  prompts  the  sacrifice ;  and,  the  sacrifice 
once  made,  the  world  outside  acknowledges  also  the 
higher  divinity  of  the  deed. 

The  subject  is  far  from  being  exhausted  ;  yet  time 
remains  only  for  one  thought  in  conclusion,  and  that 
an  important  one.  There  must  be  some  object  for 
wliicJi  sacrifice  is  made,  some  worthy  object ;  else  the 
doctrine  finds  no  valid  justification.  Sacrifice  for 
the  mere  sake  of  sacrifice  is  neither  morality  nor 
religion.  It  is  only  a  poor  asceticism  which  nar- 
rows, worries,  and  wearies  the  soul  more  than  it 
elevates.     But  sacrifice  of  self  for  the  sake  of  some 


68  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

object  held  dearer  than  self;  sacrifice  of  self  out  of 
love  for  another,  or  love  for  the  truth,  or  love  for 
humanity,  or  love  of  country, —  this  it  is  that  saves 
us  ;  for  only  this  lifts  us  out  of  the  circle  of  self, 
and  gives  our  life  a  higher  and  more  universal  sweep. 
He  who  gives  himself,  not  merely  for  the  sake  of 
self-discipline,  but  for  the  sake  of  love,  finds  a  higher 
spirit  of  love  pervading  his  whole  being.  He  enters 
into  a  sphere  of  loftier  affection,  of  holier  action. 
He  becomes  one  with  those  higher  objects  for  which 
he  gives  himself,  and  so  finds  his  life  brought  more 
into  harmony  with  absolute  and  eternal  aims.  Who- 
ever dies  for  the  truth  dies  that  he  may  live  more 
truthful  ;  whoever  dies  for  humanity  becomes  more 
humane;  whoever  dies  for  God  becomes  more  God- 
like. 

And,  at  this  day,  what  our  nation  in  its  time  of 
trial  has  needed,  and  still  needs  most  of  all,  is  the 
more  openly  avowed  and  inspiring  purpose  of  a  holy 
cause.  Let  our  struggle  be  expressly  for  justice  and 
humanity.  As  the  armies  of  treason  are  gathered 
avowedly  for  the  defence  of  a  government  founded 
on  slavery,  let  the  loyal  men  of  the  nation  take  up 
the  challenge,  and  rally  under  the  holier  and  more 
chivalrous  title,  "  Defenders  of  liberty."  Let  the 
principles  of  our  heroic  fathers, —  dead,  but  in  their 
graves  still  speaking, —  universally  applied,  even  as 
they  hoped  and  prophesied,  inspire  us.  Not  the 
Union  alone,  but  "  Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  for- 
ever, one  and  inseparable," —  let  that  be  our  aim  ; 
and  so  let  us  rally  to  make  this  land  actually  in  the 
future  what  it  has  been  only  ideally  in  the  past,  the 


SELF-SACRIFICE  69 

home  where  the  oppressed  of  every  nation  and  race 
and  people  may  lift  themselves  up  to  manhood,  and 
be  counted  members  of  one  family  on  earth  as  they 
are  children  of  one  Father  in  heaven.  Not,  I  be- 
lieve, until  we  are  ready  to  give  ourselves  for  an 
object  like  this,  shall  we  be  strong  enough  for  vic- 
tory or  worthy  to  achieve  it. 

Go    forth   in    this    faith,  ye   brave  and    freedom- 
loving  hearts  !     Your  country  calls  you ;  humanity 
needs  you.      And,  though    the   human   voices  that 
summon  you  do  not  as  yet  all  thrill  with  the  stir- 
ring tones  of  freedom,  yet  go  in  faith.     The  notes 
of  liberty,  still  somewhat  muffled,  shall  yet  ring  clear 
throughout  the  land,  and  the  world  shall  own  you  as 
the  brave  army  of  freedom's  defenders.     Meanwhile, 
rally  to  the  summons  that  comes  up  from  <the  deep 
instincts   of   your   hearts;  rally   to    the    cry  of    hu- 
manity crushed  to  the  earth  ;  rally  to  the  voice  that 
comes  down  from  the  Lord  God  of  justice  in    the 
heavens  !     And  for  us  who  must  remain  at  home, — 
let  us  not  grow  weary  in  upholding  the  great  cause 
for  which  our  country  struggles  ;  let  us  stand  firmly 
for  the  right;  and,  though  the  result  we  pray  for 
comes  not   yet,   though  wickedness   seems   still    to 
triumph  and  the  counsels  of  weak  men  to  prevail, 
yet  let  us  still  labor  on,  giving  ourselves  — our  word, 
our  deed,  our  treasure  — to  our  country's  life,  confi- 
dent that  the  right  must  win  at  last,  and  our  sacri- 
fices be  blessed  with  a  victory  for  humanity  and  a 
peace  that   shall  be  enduring.      And,   oh,  may  the 
Spirit   of    Infinite  Compassion   instil    into   all    our 
hearts  the  gentler  mercies  and  humanities  that  the 


JO  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

hour  demands.  Let  the  sick,  the  wounded,  the 
suffering,  the  bereaved,  have  our  constant  sympathy, 
our  constant  care.  Tender  in  heart,  just  and  firm 
in  aim,  helpful  in  hand,  so  may  we  strive  to  do 
the  duties  of  the  time  ;  and  so,  over  the  ruin  and 
waste,  the  shattered  hearts  and  broken  households 
of  this  conflict,  may  new  life  spring  up,  with  fairer 
moralities  and  nobler  societies  and  juster  legisla- 
tion !  Though  we  go  forth  in  weeping,  yet,  bearing 
precious  seed,  we  shall  doubtless  come  again  with 
rejoicing,  bringing  with  us  costly  sheaves  of  God's 
harvested  truths.  Our  brothers,  lifted  upon  the 
cross  of  battle,  shall  draw  all  our  hearts  to  greater 
reverence  for  the  sacred  principles  which  they  have 
died  to  save.  From  these  red  fields  of  carnage, 
planted  with  the  blood  of  our  bravest  and  best,  shall 
spring  up  richer  crops  of  virtue,  even  trees  of  right- 
eousness whose  leaves  shall  be  for  the  healing  of 
all  nations ;  and,  over  the  desolation  caused  by  the 
demon  of  war,  we  will  rear  new  and  fairer  temples 
to  the  Prince  of  Peace. 

May  10,  1863. 


Note. —  This  sermon  was  first  preached  in  April,  1S62,  with  the 
exception  of  the  last  two  paragraphs.  Besides  its  repetition  at  New 
Bedford,  with  these  paragraphs  added,  it  was  given  in  fifteen  other 
places  in  1862  and  1863,  where  it  was  believed  it  might  be  of  service 
in  helping  on  the  enlistment  of  soldiers  for  the  national  army. 


VI. 
THE   RELIGION    OF    THE   AFFECTIONS. 

"  Then  said  Jesus,  Let  her  alone :  against  the  day  of  my  burying 
hath  she  kept  this.  For  the  poor  always  ye  have  with  you ;  but  me 
ye  have  not  always." — John  xii.,  7,  8. 

Human  nature  is  many-sided ;  and  religion,  which 
in  its  full  sense  is  the  perfect  satisfaction  of  all 
human  needs,  must  offer  some  truth  and  present 
some  obligations  for  every  side.  The  natural  affec- 
tions of  our  hearts  have  therefore  an  appropriate 
place  in  the  complete  religious  life.  I  wish  «to  speak 
to-day  of  the  religion  of  the  affections ;  and  the 
theme  was  well  illustrated  in  the  domestic  scene  in 
the  house  of  Lazarus  and  his  sisters  as  described  in 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  where  Jesus,  on  being  rebuked 
for  allowing  Mary  to  waste  the  precious  ointment 
upon  his  person  when  it  might  have  been  sold  and 
the  proceeds  given  to  the  poor,  rebuked  in  turn  his 
critic,  on  the  ground  that,  while  the  poor  were 
always  at  hand  and  always  to  be  cared  for,  there  was 
also  a  legitimate  place  for  the  expression  of  personal 
affection,  and  that  the  legitimate  time  and  manner  of 
such  expression,  if  allowed  to  pass,  might  never 
return.  The  poor  are  always  with  us  :  the  demands 
for  charity  and  general  philanthropy  are  ever  at 
hand.     But  our  heart-friends  do  not  remain  always 


72  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

where  they  can  receive  the  demonstrations  of   our 
love. 

It  has  been  very  commonly  represented  that  relig- 
ion denies,  as  some  religions  have  denied,  these 
natural  affections  of  the  human  heart  which  bind 
persons  together  in  families,  in  friendships,  in  social 
and  kindred  circles.  It  is  said  that  religion  includes 
love  to  God  and  love  to  man, —  that  is,  a  universal 
love  for  the  whole  race  of  mankind, —  but  that  it 
does  not  embrace  the  special  affections,  such  as  the 
conjugal,  filial,  parental,  friendly,  fraternal,  social,  and 
the  like.  Therefore,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
considers  it  the  highest  grade  of  the  religious  life  to 
forsake  all  ties  made  by  such  affections,  and,  in  re- 
tirement from  the  affairs  of  the  world  and  from  all 
the  joys  and  loves  of  a  home,  to  devote  one's  self  to 
works  of  so-called  piety  toward  God  and  of  general 
charity  toward  man.  Its  constant  question  of  the 
world  is,  Why  this  waste  of  wealth  on  the  selfish 
demands  of  the  heart,  when  it  might  have  been 
given  to  relieve  the  sufferings  of  the  poor  or  to  save 
souls  from  eternal  torments  ?  Francis  of  Assisi, 
founder  of  the  powerful  order  of  Franciscan  monks, 
renounced  his  father's  rich  inheritance,  cut  himself 
off  from  all  ties  of  home  and  friendship,  put  on  a 
robe  of  the  coarsest  cloth,  and  went  through  the 
country  begging  alms  to  build  churches.  He  visited 
hospitals,  and  washed  the  feet  and  kissed  the  loath- 
some sores  of  lepers,  left  his  bed  empty  and  slept 
upon  the  ground,  mixed  his  food  with  ashes  to  make 
it  less  palatable ;  and  for  twenty  years  he  travelled 
thus    as  a   friendless    beggar    through    many   lands, 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  73 

doing,  indeed,  a  vast  missionary  work  and  perform- 
ing acts  of  the  most  self-denying  and  self-mortifying 
charity,  but  all  the  time  repelling  and  crucifying 
every  natural  affection  and  love  of  his  heart.  And 
this,  says  the  Catholic  Church,  is  the  highest  type 
of  religion;  and  Francis  of  Assisi  is  made  a  saint. 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary  abandoned  her  own  children, 
dismissed  her  maids  when  she  found  herself  loving 
them  too  well,  and  devoted  herself  to  caring  for  the 
sick  and  giving  alms  to  the  children  of  the  poor; 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  canonizes  her  there- 
for. There  have  been  women  who  have  wrought 
with  equal  patience,  devotion,  and  self-sacrifice  in 
their  own  homes,  loving  their  own  children  and 
caring  for  their  own  households ;  but  the  Church  of 
Rome  has  "never  made  them  saints,  nor  does  it  even 
regard  their  faithfully  and  heroically  performed 
duties  as  religious.  There  have  been  men  who, 
without  renouncing  the  world  or  the  natural  life  of 
the  heart,  have  performed  as  great  deeds  of  philan- 
thropy as  Francis  d'  Assisi ;  yet,  in  the  eye  of  the 
Church  of  Rome,  they  have  not  made  the  first  step 
toward  saintship. 

Protestantism  has  denied,  indeed,  this  extreme 
view  of  self-denial  and  self-mortification.  Protes- 
tantism does  not  assert  that  the  highest  religious 
duty  is  to  crucify  the  natural  affections  of  the  heart, 
nor  that  to  indulge  them  is  sinful  or  irreligious.  It 
does  not  demand  that  a  man  or  woman,  in  order  to 
be  holy  and  saintly,  must  withdraw  from  the  world 
and  from  all  social  and  domestic  life.  And  yet 
Protestantism,  as  a  general  thing,  has  not  ventured 


74  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

to  assert  that  religion  embraces  the  natural  affec- 
tions of  the  heart.  Though  it  does  not,  like  Ca- 
tholicism, call  them  irreligious  and  make  war  upon 
them,  neither  does  it  call  them  religious.  It  has 
regarded  them,  generally,  as  a  neutral  field  between 
religion  and  irreligion  ;  as  a  fruitful  source  of  temp- 
tations, idolatries,  snares,  delusions,  and  spiritual 
conflicts, —  as  belonging  to  "the  things  of  the  world," 
good  in  their  places,  but  transient  and  perishable, 
and  to  be  watched  lest  they  usurp  too  great  a  place, 
and  interfere  with  the  claims  of  religious  duty  and 
the  eternal  interests  of  the  soul.  But  Protestantism 
hardly  more  than  Catholicism  has  dared  to  affirm 
that  there  can  be  any  religion  in  the  life  of  the 
natural  affections  themselves ;  and  Jesus,  it  is  said, 
has  shown  us  by  his  life  how  the  natural  affections 
of  the  heart  for  home  and  kindred  and  friends  are  to 
be  denied,  that  one  may  live  the  more  wholly  to  God 
and  the  truth.  Even  the  liberal,  learned,  and  brill- 
iant French  biographer  of  Jesus,  Renan,  thinks  that 
Jesus  was  in  many  things  an  ascetic, —  that  he 
"preached  war  against  nature,"  voluntary  "poverty" 
and  "celibacy,"  and  "total  rupture  with  kin." 

Now,  Jesus'  own  example  cannot,  I  believe,  be 
rightly  drawn  to  the  support  of  any  ascetic  view  of 
religion.  That  certain  sayings  reported  of  him,  torn 
from  their  connection  and  from  the  general  spirit  of 
his  teaching  and  practice,  are  capable  of  such  an 
interpretation,  I  admit ;  and  it  would  be  strange  if 
he  should  not  have  had  some  tinge  of  the  asceticism 
that  belonged  to  the  purest  religious  sects  of  his 
time  ;  but  the  general  moral  and  religious  influence 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  75 

of  his  life  and  the  aggregate  weight  of  his  teaching 
are  decidedly  the   other  way.     On   account   of   his 
freedom  from  ascetic  practices,  he  was  even  stigma- 
tized as  "  a  man  gluttonous  and  a  wine-bibber,"  an 
associate  with  "publicans  and  sinners."     He  does 
not  appear  to  have  practised  self-denial  for  the  mere 
sake  of  self-denial.     He  did  not  preach  the  abandon- 
ment  of   home   and  friends,  of   earthly   goods  and 
social  ties,  as  a  virtue  in  itself  ;  yet  he  was  as  ready 
as  Francis  d'  Assisi  to  make  these  sacrifices  when- 
ever  the   cause   of   truth   and  virtue   demanded  it. 
The  distinction  is  here :  ascetic  religion  seeks  ways 
of  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice  for  their  own  sake  ; 
true   religion    accepts    self-denial    and    self-sacrifice 
when  self  stands  in  the  way  of  something  greater 
than    self.      Francis    of    Assisi    slept   on  tthe   bare 
ground,  though  there  were  beds  all  around  him,  for 
the   mere   sake   of    mortifying   and    deadening  ^  the 
body:  Jesus  "had  not  where  to  lay  his  head,"  be- 
cause often,  under   the  necessities  of  his  mission, 
persecuted  from  town  to  town,  the  earth  and  sky  were 
the  only  hospitality  offered  him. 

Nor  is  it  true  that  Jesus  abandoned  all  social  and 
domestic  ties,  and  denied  himself  the  support  of  the 
love  and  sympathy  of  congenial  hearts.  It  is  proba- 
ble that  his  mission  drew  him  away  somewhat  from 
his  own  family  and  kindred ;  for  they  could  not 
understand,  more  than  his  old  neighbors,  the  source 
of  this  strange  power  that  he  possessed  as  a  teacher, 
and  the  misunderstanding  became  a  cause  of  partial 
alienation.  But,  though  under  the  exigencies  of  his 
work,  the  home  was  in  great  measure  lost,  home  joys 


76  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

and  ties  and  affections  were  not  lost.  His  little 
band  of  disciples  was  his  family.  With  them,  he 
worked  and  travelled  and  lived.  And,  when  his 
human  love  craved  a  warmer  and  more  interior 
home,  there  were  three  disciples,  Peter,  James,  and 
John,  who  seemed  to  form  an  inner  circle  within 
this  little  flock  of  followers,  and  to  whom  his  heart 
went  out  in  its  deepest  intimacies  and  most  earnest 
cravings  for  sympathy.  Nor  was  he  without  domes- 
tic shelter  and  hospitality  and  love.  The  house  of 
Simon  Peter,  in  the  village  of  Capernaum,  became 
his  home  while  in  Galilee,  where  he  was  cared  for 
like  an  own  son.  He  was  a  frequent  guest  at  the 
house  of  Zebedee  ;  and,  occasionally,  some  of  the 
wealthier  citizens  invited  him  under  their  roofs  and 
to  their  tables.  There  were  devoted  women,  like 
Salome,  Joanna,  and  the  faithful  Mary  Magdalen, 
who  followed  him,  bound  by  no  merely  technical 
religious  tie,  but  held  by  the  tie  of  gratitude  and 
love  and  personal  devotion.  But  the  most  beautiful 
of  all  these  ties  of  private  affection  was  that  which 
bound  him  to  the  family  at  Bethany, —  to  Lazarus 
and  his  sisters.  Here  seems  to  have  been  his  home 
during  his  work  in  Judea  ;  and  his  visits  to  this 
house,  when  the  burdens  of  his  toilsome  service 
appear  for  a  time  to  have  been  laid  aside,  while  his 
nature  refreshed  itself  with  home  affections  and 
delights,  are  like  bright  oases  in  the  midst  of  the 
stormy  desert  of  his  public  life.  Here,  aside  from 
faithful  discipleship,  was  pure  and  exalted  friend- 
ship. Here  was  not  only  religious  fellowship,  but 
love,    sympathy,    communion   of   hearts.     Here  not 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  J7 

only  stern  duty,  but  the  voice  of  affection  was 
heard ;  and  Jesus  was  for  the  hour  transformed 
from  the  public  teacher  and  religious  reformer  into 
the  cordial  companion  and,  possibly,  tender  lover. 

In  view  of  intimacies  and  friendships  like  these, 
it  is  a  great  error  to  suppose  that  Jesus  lived  and 
died  in  ascetic  denial  of  the  claims  of  the  heart.  If 
his  own  example  is  to  be  considered  as  settling  the 
question,  it  is  certain  that,  while  he  did  not  allow 
the  natural  affections  of  the  heart  to  thwart  or 
interfere  with  the  ruling  purpose  of  his  career,  he 
yet  did  not  sacrifice  them,  but  gave  them  a  large 
and  sacred  place  in  the  completed  temple  of  his 
religious  life. 

Again,  Jesus  draws  some  of  his  sublimest  relig- 
ious lessons  from  these  natural  human  affections. 
How  does  he  illustrate  the  bond  of  religious  disci- 
pleship  but  by  the  terms  "brother,"  "sister," 
"mother"?  How  does  he  teach  the  perfect  provi- 
dence of  the  Infinite  Power  but  by  the  argument, 
"  If  ye  then  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your 
children,  shall  not  your  Father  in  heaven  give  good 
things  to  them  that  ask  him  ? "  How  does  he  de- 
clare the  quick,  pardoning  mercy  of  Heaven  toward 
sinning  men  and  women  but  by  that  exquisite  por- 
trayal of  a  human  father's  forgiving  love  for  a  wan- 
dering child  in  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son? 
Where,  in  fact,  did  Jesus  find  the  word  that  best  and 
oftenest  expressed  his  conception  of  the  character 
and  government  of  Deity,  and  is  the  key  to  the 
whole  edifice  of  his  religious  ideas,  but  in  the  pa- 
rental relation  of  the  human  family  ?     In  short,  it  is 


y8  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

in  these  intimate  human  relations,  in  these  home 
affections,  sympathies,  and  services  that  are  often 
considered  without  the  pale  of  religious  duties,  or 
even  as  standing  in  the  way  of  religious  duties,  that 
Jesus  found  the  most  apt  illustrations  of  the  special 
religious  truths  he  had  to  teach.  He  took  these 
common,  inborn  affections  of  the  heart  that  bind  the 
human  family  together,  lifted  them  up,  as  it  were, 
into  a  higher  and  purer  atmosphere,  and  showed 
how,  both  in  their  origin  and  in  their  issue,  they 
are  a  type  of  our  relations  to  infinite  Being  and 
infinite  providence.  Shall  we,  then,  in  the  face  of 
these  teachings  and  habits  of  Jesus,  dare  to  assert 
on  the  ground  of  his  example  that  there  is  any- 
thing irreligious,  or  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  relig- 
ion, in  the  natural  affections  of  the  heart  ?  "  Let 
them  alone,"  says  this  great  teacher  of  duty  :  "  re- 
strict not  the  heart,  mutilate  not  its  loves,  forbid 
not  the  tender  outflow  of  its  sympathies,  even 
though  a  merely  careful  prudence  cries,  '  Why  this 
waste  ? '  " 

And  in  human  nature  itself,  in  its  origin,  its 
needs,  and  its  destiny,  we  find  this  claim  of  the 
natural  affections  justified.  These  fountains  of  do- 
mestic and  friendly  love  are  in  the  deepest  places  of 
our  being.  They  spring  up  at  the  very  root  of  our 
natures,  among  those  eternal  forces  amid  which 
our  special  natures  stand,  and  from  which  they  have 
in  some  way  been  educed.  They  appear  in  us  as 
instincts.  They  are  vital,  therefore,  with  the  very 
life  of  that  mysterious  energy  which  is  behind  and 
anterior  to  our  being,  and  pulsate  with  a  power  that 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  79 

comes  throbbing  from  the  central  purpose  and  heart 
of   the   universe  itself.     These  energies  of  wedded 
and  parental  love,  of   fraternal  and  domestic  affec- 
tion, whence  come  the  ties  of  home  and  family,  are 
so  manifestly  a  pressure  from  the  heart  of  nature, 
and  are  so  essential  to  the  ascending  development  of 
her  life,  that  I  know  not  why  we  may  not  call  them 
the  very  power  of  God  in  the  human  soul.     They 
are  put,  indeed,  somewhat  for  direction  and  control 
under  reason  and  conscience,  and  are  amenable  to 
the  law  of  justice   and  general  benefit  that    is    the 
basis  of   social  morality;   but  to  deny  them,  to  re- 
press their  divine  spontaneity,  to  smother  and  anni- 
hilate them,  is  to  sin  against  the  purpose  and  law 
of   universal  nature,  and    might  well  be  defined  as 
one  form  of  the  transgression  which  the  New  Testa- 
ment calls  the  sin   against  the  Holy  Ghost.     It  is 
the   very  life  of    eternal    Being,  seeking  ever  some 
higher   and    more   favoring   form    of   manifestation, 
that  has  organized  these  natural  affections  and  sym- 
pathies  within  us.     The  power  of  God  is   in  them 
as  the  very  bond  of  the  union.     The  dying  Bunsen 
spoke  not  in  metaphor,  but  only  simple  truth,  when 
he  said  to  his  wife,  bending  over  him,  "  In  thy  face, 
I  have  seen  the   Eternal."     Tread   reverently;   for 
here  is  holy  ground,  here  are  shrines  for  daily  wor- 
ship.    In  the  pure  loves  of  our  hearts  for  wife,  for 
husband,  for  child,  for  brother  and  sister,  for  father, 
mother,   friend,    the   Infinite   One  is  near  us, —  ay, 
lives   within   7is.     It   is  eternal   love   that  binds  us 
thus  together  in  affectionate  mutual  service.     Hold 
it  sacred.     Profane  it  not,  deny  it  not,  defile  it  not. 


80  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

Kneel  at   the  heart's    shrines,  and  gratefully  adore 
and  serve. 

This  inner  circle  of  affection  is  needed,  too,  in 
order  that  the  great  outer  work  of  life  may  be  most 
effectually  done, —  in  order  that  even  the  universal 
charities  and  philanthropies  may  be  the  better  ac- 
complished. There  are  portions  of  life  which  can 
only  be  developed  in  this  close  intimacy  of  affection, 
—  which  are  too  sacred  for  public  participation, — 
which,  like  some  rare  and  delicate  plants,  only  ap- 
pear under  certain  conditions  of  privacy  as  to  shelter 
and  temperature.  Yet  these  portions  are  also  nec- 
essary to  the  completeness  of  our  lives  and  to  the 
full  performance  of  our  duties ;  and  they  are  neces- 
sary, not  merely  for  their  own  sake  and  the  rounding 
of  the  life  in  that  direction,  but  for  the  perfect 
rounding  of  the  life  in  all  other  directions  and  the 
complete  development  and  action  of  all  its  parts. 
The  men  who  live  solely  in  public,  whether  it  be  for 
ends  of  business,  or  philanthropy,  or  political  or 
religious  service,  lose  a  certain  refinement  and  ten- 
derness of  nature  and  a  certain  moral  and  spiritual 
aroma,  which  are  found  only  in  the  enclosed  and 
sheltered  gardens  of  private  affection  ;  and  by  as 
much  as  this  loss  detracts  from  the  full  complete- 
ness of  the  life,  by  so  much  does  it  detract  from  its 
strength  and  usefulness  in  any  public  service.  We 
touch  here,  indeed,  upon  a  great  general  law, —  the 
X  law  of  culture.  There  must  be  a  certain  amount  of 
general  culture  of  our  whole  being  before  the  best 
fruit  of  any  special  faculty  can  be  produced.  No 
man  is  a  great  statesman  who  is  only  a  statesman. 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  8 1 

No  man  who  is  merely  a  business  man  has  breadth 
enough  for  the  greatest  operations  in  business.  A 
man  who  is  so  narrow  as  to  be  only  a  mechanician 
is  too  narrow  —  he  lacks  the  necessary  knowledge  — 
for  the  highest  achievements  in  mechanics  ;  and  the 
man  who  is  only  a  public  philanthropist  is  not  broad 
enough  to  achieve  the  grandest  successes  in  philan- 
thropy. In  accordance  with  this  same  law,  the 
culture  of  the  private  and  domestic  affections  is 
necessary  to  the  fullest  accomplishment  of  the  pub- 
lic service  that  is  required  of  us.  These  affections 
enlarge,  elevate,  and  refine  the  whole  nature,  and 
better  prepare  it  for  its  special  work  in  any  direc- 
tion. There  is  no  love  of  universal  humanity  that 
can  take  the  place  of  the  heart's  private  loves  ;  and 
the  broadest  love  of  mankind  may  have  a<  kindlier 
flavor,  if  it  yield  its  austere  demands  now  and  then 
to  home  affections  and  delights.  The  domestic  af- 
fections are  the  inns  along  the  rough  highways  of 
life,  where  Duty  is  refreshed  and  girds  herself  anew 
for  the  severe  pilgrimage  and  stern  tasks  before  her ; 
and  as,  without  seasons  of  refreshment,  the  traveller 
must  perish  in  the  way,  so,  without  these  resting- 
places  of  the  heart,  conscience  may  be  overstrained, 
and  Duty  sink  down  exhausted  in  her  own  severely 
appointed  path.  The  lives  that  have  been  spent  in 
attempts  to  show  that  it  is  possible  to  put  away  all 
earthly  love,  till  the  soul,  intense  with  individual 
piety,  shall  seem  a  clear  flame  of  spiritual  devotion 
ascending  to  heaven, —  these  very  lives  have  proved, 
by  the  fruitlessness  of  the  effort  or  by  some  mon- 
strosity in  the  result,  the  absolute  necessity  and 
divineness  of  earthly  love. 


82  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

But  not  only  are  the  natural  claims  of  the  heart 
to  be  acceded  to  for  the  perfect  development  of  our 
present  being,  but  also  for  the  better  accomplishment 
of  our  destiny  as  beings  who  may  be  immortal.  I 
would  speak  of  this  point  with  caution,  because  it 
is  a  point  on  which  positive  knowledge  fails  us ;  and 
we  can  only  draw  inferences  from  premises  which 
rest  on  the  basis  of  the  strongest  rational  probability. 
Not  arguing  this  question  now,  but  assuming  that 
some  kind  of  continuance  of  existence  for  human 
beings,  after  these  few  years  of  earthly  life  are  over, 
is  the  more  rational  alternative,  I  wish  to  make  and 
emphasize  the  point  that  the  culture  of  the  personal 
affections  is  not  simply  probationary,  not  merely 
educational  in  the  sense  of  preparing  our  natures  for 
some  great  spiritual  service  in  the  world  hereafter, 
but  the  affections  themselves  are  immortal:  they  go 
with  us  and  remain  a  part  of  us  in  the  world  here- 
after. 

If  we  are  to  preserve  our  personal  identity  after 
death,  I  see  not  how  we  can  come  to  any  other  belief 
than  this  :  the  heart,  with  all  its  real  loves,  attach- 
ments, and  sympathies, — with  all  its  still  folded  ca- 
pacities, too, —  remains  with  us.  It  is  in  this  that 
the  richest  and  best  parts  of  our  lives  have  been 
found  here.  It  is  this  that  is  deepest  in  our  being, 
this  for  which  more  than  anything  else  we  crave  per- 
sonal continuance.  I  cannot  conceive,  therefore,  any 
individual  human  existence  hereafter  in  which  the 
personal  and  social  affections  are  not  to  fill  an  impor- 
tant place  and  contribute  in  a  most  important  degree 
to  the  heavenly  service  and  felicity.     Nay,  I  believe 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  83 

that  these  affections  must  enter  much  more  into  our 
lives  there  than  they  have  ever  entered,  or  can  enter, 
into  our  lives  here.  I  do  not  picture  the  future  life 
as  simply  the  unimpeded  intellectual  discovery  and 
reverence  of  truth,  however  high  the  dignity  and 
large  the  satisfactions  of  such  a  career.  I  do  not 
picture  it  as  only  moral  adherence  to  the  line  of 
divine  rectitude,  though  of  necessity  including  that. 
I  do  not  picture  it  as  merely  a  higher  field  for  the 
rigid,  self-sacrificing  services  of  charity  and  philan- 
thropy, but  as  that  and  more.  Least  of  all  do  I 
picture  it  as  a  continuous  discharge  of  technical 
religious  duties, —  a  monotonous  scene  of  adoration 
and  worship,  of  praises  and  psalm-singing  and  shout- 
ings of  hosannas  around  a  celestial  throne.  Nor 
can  I  accept  the  more  mystical  interpretation  of  this 
latter  view,  and  say  with  religious  stoicism  that  the 
heavenly  life  is  the  rapturous  adoration  and  worship 
of  Infinite  Being  alone, —  that  it  is  to  live  with  Him 
in  such  a  way  that  all  other  personal  relations,  all 
other  personal  longings  and  regrets,  are  swallowed 
up  and  lost  in  the  personal  relation  to  Him.  Not 
thus,  O  friends,  do  I  read  man's  future.  Not  thus  do 
I  read  it  from  his  past  or  from  his  present,  from  his 
history  or  from  his  capacities  and  his  yearnings. 

We  may  hope,  indeed,  in  that  world  of  more  re- 
fined mentality,  to  gaze  with  ardor  upon  the  new 
truth  that  will  be  revealed  to  us ;  we  may  hope  to 
walk  with  fonder  obedience  the  path  of  rectitude, 
and  to  live  as  devoted  helpers  and  lovers  of  our 
race ;  we  may  hope  to  know  and  serve  and  live  in 
more  vital  connection  with   the  Eternal   Power,   in 


84  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

some  higher  and  larger  way  than  anything  our  im- 
aginations can  now  conceive.  But  the  crowning  dis- 
tinction and  glory  of  the  future  world  must  be,  I 
believe,  the  unfolding,  ever  more  and  more,  of  the 
life  of  the  human  heart  in  its  finite  personal  rela- 
tions ;  the  disclosure,  ever  more  and  more,  of  the 
mysterious  depths  of  the  riches,  beauty,  and  power 
of  these  relations ;  the  development  of  our  natures 
as  persons  into  ever  higher  and  more  determinate, 
yet  more  complicated  and  co-related  forms,  as  organ- 
isms of  the  infinite  energy  and  life.  This  is  nature's 
highway  of  development, —  increasing  forms  of  dif- 
ferentiation, and  thereby  constant  ascent  in  individ- 
ual intelligence  and  power,  and  not  reabsorption  into 
the  original  mass  of  being.  I  see  not  how  we  could 
be  nearer  to  God  as  a  person  in  the  future  world  than 
we  are  in  this ;  for  "in  him,"  even  now,  "we  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being."  Indeed,  I  cannot  con- 
ceive of  God  as  a  person, —  as  one  whom  we  can 
approach  and  have  relations  with,  as  we  approach  and 
have  relations  with  each  other.  That,  to  my  thought, 
makes  him  finite.  But,  if  we  are  to  attribute  person- 
ality to  him  at  all,  he  is  Person  of  persons  ;  or  that 
which  is  the  substratum  in  which  finite  personalities 
inhere, —  the  vital  power  through  which  they  have 
found  being  and  by  which  they  are  bound  together 
in  social  relations  and  ties.  And  hence  I  conceive 
that  our  heaven  will  be  the  larger  and  freer  unfolding 
and  enriching  of  our  personal  being  and  finite  per- 
sonal relations.  We  shall  not  be  nearer,  in  any 
literal  sense,  to  God, —  we  shall  never  look  upon  his 
face  as  the  face  of  a  man  ;  but  we  shall  enclose  more 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS  85 

of  his  being  in  our  being,  and  in  him  we  shall  draw 
nearer  to  each  other,  and  look  with  clearer  vision 
into  each  other's  faces,  and  touch  with  fonder  rapt- 
ure and  more  blissful  communion  each  other's  hearts. 
We  shall  admire  Truth  and  Goodness  and  Beauty, — 
the  accorded  attributes  of  Infinite  Being ;  but  we 
shall  admire  them  mainly,  and  in  ever-increasing 
measure,  in  their  personal  manifestations,  and  as  they 
bind  us  by  many  a  strong  and  sacred  tie  in  social 
relationships.  We  shall  worship, —  less  in  form,  but 
more  in  substance, —  our  worship  becoming  ever 
more  and  more  the  living  "beauty  of  holiness,"  — 
love,  fidelity,  affectionate,  just,  and  helpful  service 
to  each  other. 

We  know  not,  indeed,  how  these  natural  immortal 
affections  are  to  build  the  heavenly  homes<  and  cir- 
cles and  societies ;  but  we  know  that  they  are  strong 
enough  to  draw  kindred  hearts  together  here,  and 
to  build  up  homes,  and  to  hold  firmly  the  friendly 
circle.  And  so,  with  perfect  assurance,  we  can  trust 
them,  in  that  freer  and  sihcerer  life,  to  rear  the 
mansions  of  eternal  love,  and  to  draw  into  them,  and 
into  friendly  neighborhood,  the  hearts  that  really 
belong  together.  The  mere  earthly  relations  may 
fall  away, —  they  are  but  educational,  preliminary ; 
but  the  ties  of  the  heart,  the  kinships  of  the  soul, — 
these,  if  anything,  must  survive  all  changes  of  time 
and  death  and  the  grave. 

We  do  not  know  all,  my  friends ;  but  we  know 
enough, —  enough  to  cause  us  to  put  the  culture  of 
the  domestic,  personal,  and  social  affections  among 
the  first  of  religious  duties.     Starve  them  not,  sup- 


86  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

press  them  not.  Let  them  grow,  and  glow,  and 
flame  their  genial  warmth  into  all  the  cold  places  of 
life.  And  let  them  consume  all  the  secret  or  toler- 
ated impurities  that  usurp  their  sacred  name.  Guard 
all  your  true  friendships  faithfully,  sacredly :  the 
heart  of  your  friend  joins  yours,  because  some  por- 
tion of  divine  power  possesses  you  in  common  at 
that  point.  Let  your  kindly  word  and  deed  be  felt 
in  all  your  neighborhood  and  through  all  your 
friendly  circle, —  elevating,  purifying,  enlivening  with 
innocent  joy.  And  in  your  homes, —  oh  for  a  tongue 
inspired  to  speak  of  the  holy  affections  and  obliga- 
tions there !  We  have  not  yet  half  learned  the 
worth  of  the  home.  We  have  not  yet  learned  what 
depths  of  religion  lie  beneath  the  affections  on  which 
it  is  based.  Not  wealth,  nor  social  ambition,  nor  fash- 
ion should  build  it;  not  prudence,  nor  convenience, 
nor  even  conscience  alone,  should  build  it.  But 
love  should  build  it;  and  love  —  wise  love  —  should 
reign  in  it.  Let  it  build  it  so  pure  and  beautiful 
and  sincere  that  it  shall  be  a  foretaste  and  type  of 
the  heavenly  dwelling.  Let  it  make  its  realities  so 
attractive  that  no  frivolities  nor  illusions  can  draw 
son  or  daughter,  husband  or  wife,  into  temptation 
elsewhere.  Let  it  fill  it  so  full  of  pure  service,  irra- 
diate it  with  such  joy  and  peace,  that  no  place  in  all 
the  world  shall  seem  so  good,  so  divine.  Let  love 
—  wise  love  —  build  it.  Though  it  founds  it  on  the 
earth,  it  will  rear  it  to  the  heavens  and  open  it  into 
the  celestial  mansions  ;  and,  though  the  members  of 
the  household  must  one  after  another  depart,  they 
may  still  not  be  far  away :  they  may  have  only  gone 


THE    RELIGION    OF    THE    AFFECTIONS 

to  some  higher  room,  where  Love,  faithful  house- 
keeper shall  find  them,  every  one,  and  preside  still 
with  patient  fidelity  over  the  one  family  on  earth 
and  in  heaven. 


April  2,  1865. 


VII. 

ENDURANCE. 

"  Behold,  we  count  them  happy  which  endure."  —  Epistle  of 
James. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  of  physics  that  every  re- 
sult in  nature  is  achieved  through  the  operation  of 
two  sets  of  forces, —  the  forces  of  impulsion  and  the 
forces  of  resistance.  Or,  to  speak  more  precisely, 
physical  force  manifests  itself  in  two  ways, —  by 
direct  action  and  by  reflex  action ;  and  every  move- 
ment, every  growth,  every  evolution  in  nature,  is  the 
resultant  of  this  double  putting-forth  of  power.  It 
is  from  the  combination  of  these  two  exhibitions  of 
force,  harmoniously  balanced,  the  first  of  which 
would  impel  in  a  direct  line  through  endless  space 
and  the  other  bring  to  speedy  rest,  that  the  earth 
describes  its  symmetrical  orbit,  returning  to  it  with 
precision  every  year.  And  thus,  too,  it  is  that  all 
the  heavenly  bodies  group  themselves  in  families 
and  systems,  finding  rest  in  their  harmonious  rela- 
tions with  each  other,  at  the  same  time  that  they 
have  infinite  motion  and  variety  in  their  endless 
circles.  Science  even  allows  us  through  the  infinite 
vista  opened  by  this  law  of  forces  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  process  by  which  chaos  first  began  to  divide 
into  worlds ;  and  it  is  by  this  same  balance  of  forces 


ENDURANCE  89 

that  all  the  physical  phenomena  of  the  worlds  are 
continued.  By  this,  stones  get  their  structure,  veg- 
etation is  produced,  our  feet  walk  the  earth,  and 
the  nail  clasps  the  wood  so  that  our  houses  stand. 
It  is  from  the  impulsion  of  the  wind  and  the  resist- 
ance of  the  waves  that  our  ships  sail  the  sea ;  from 
the  friction  of  the  rail  and  the  expansion  of  steam 
that  the  locomotive  makes  the  circuit  of  the  globe. 

There  is  the  same  double  manifestation  of  force  in 
things  moral  and  spiritual, — the  force  positive  and  the 
force  negative,  the  force  active  and  the  force  passive, 
the  force  direct  and  the  force  reflex,  the  force  of 
impulsion  and  the  force  of  resistance  ;  and  there 
must  be  the  same  harmonious  combination  and  bal- 
ance of  these  two  elements,  in  order  to  produce 
efficiency  and  grace  of  character.  There  must  be 
not  only  the  impulse  to  do,  but  the  capacity  to  bear ; 
not  only  the  incentive  to  move,  but  the  ability  to 
stand  ;  not  only  the  motive  to  act,  but  the  power 
to  endure  ;  not  only  the  will  to  say  yes,  but  the  will 
to  say  no ;  not  only  the  supple,  extended  hand  with 
ready  generosity  to  offer  help,  but  the  firm,  arched 
elbow  and  the  knotted  muscles  prepared  to  resist 
and  defend.  These  two  manifestations  of  force  are 
equally  necessary,  and  in  about  the  same  degree,  for 
the  highest  achievements  of  moral  and  spiritual  char- 
acter. It  is,  in  fact,  but  one  and  the  same  force 
operating  in  different  ways  ;  and,  where  there  is  any 
real,  original  strength  of  character,  it  operates  in 
both  directions  with  equal  efficiency  :  it  shows  itself, 
according  to  opportunity,  both  as  strength  to  do  and 
as  strength  to  bear. 


90  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

It  is  of  this  latter  element  of  character  —  the 
strength  to  endure,  to  bear,  to  resist,  to  suffer  —  that 
I  wish  to  speak  this  morning.  And  this  needs, 
perhaps,  the  more  to  be  enforced  by  speech  than 
the  other,  since,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  it  is 
a  more  silent  and  undemonstrative  kind  of  power 
in  itself.  The  strength  that  is  shown  in  direct  and 
positive  deeds,  the  strength  to  dare  and  to  do,  tells 
its  own  merits  and  carves  its  own  fame  ;  while  the 
strength  that  simply  endures  and  resists  must  of 
necessity  remain  very  much  in  concealment,  and, 
perchance,  its  achievements  never  be  told  to  the 
public  ear.  One  acts  chiefly  in  public,  but  one 
must  suffer  in  solitude.  The  heroic  deed  is  done 
amid  the  cheers  of  crowding  bystanders,  and  is 
lifted  to  the  knowledge  of  the  world  upon  the  breath 
of  their  huzzas  :  the  heroic  suffering  may  be  hidden 
in  the  sacred  privacy  of  home,  in  the  silence  of  some 
obscure  chamber,  or  in  the  still  deeper  and  more 
silent  recess  of  some  private  heart,  which  bears  a 
grief  that  no  human  being  knoweth,  and  whose  fame 
is  carried  only  on  the  breath  of  that  spirit  which 
"bloweth  where  it  listeth,"  but  the  sound  of  which 
comes  to  no  human  ear.  Hence,  to  the  majority  of 
men  there  is  more  stimulus  to  do  bravely  than  to 
bear  bravely  :  the  heroism  of  the  former  is  seen  and 
applauded,  the  heroism  of  the  latter  may  be  unrec- 
ognized and  unknown. 

Indeed,  there  are  many  persons  who  would  at  first 
question  whether  heroism  of  character  can  ever  be 
shown  through  the  passive  qualities  of  endurance 
and  defence.     Their  idea  of  the  hero  is  of  one  who 


ENDURANCE  91 


-oes  forth  as  an  aggressor  against  the  evils  and  ills 
of  life  ;  who  does  not  wait  for  the  hour  of  defence, 
but  averts  the  need  of  endurance  by  boldly  advanc- 
ing to  annihilate  the  cause  that  threatens  the  neces- 
sity of  such  a  resort.     He  is  one  who  courts  difficul- 
ties    and    hardships;    who    delights    in    attacking 
wrong;  who  seeks  obstacles  that  he  may  overcome 
them  ;  who  penetrates  with  a  supreme  disregard  of 
self  to  the  very  front  of  danger,  and  flings  his  life 
with  Herculean  force  into  the  deadly  assault,  deter- 
mined   if  he  must  die,  to  demand  for  the  sacrifice 
the  utmost  possible  price.     Such  a  character  as  this 
is  indeed,  admirable.     It  has  our  applause  and  our 
homa-e.     The  world  will  always  need  such  heroes, 
and  will  gratefully  find  redemption  and  progress  in 
following  their  footsteps.     But  is  the  whole  pf  hero- 
ism here?     Are  there  no  heroes  save  in  the  front 
ranks  of   battle  ?     Is  it  glorious  to  rush  with  open 
breast   against   danger,    and    not    glorious,    also,    to 
stand   in  attitude  of   waiting,  defiant  composure  to 
resist   it?     The   soldiers  who  stormed   the  forts  of 
Vicksburg  were  not  braver,  nor  did  they  do  a  more 
valorous  deed  for  their  country,  than  they  who  stood 
behind   the  ramparts  of   Gettysburg  to  receive  un- 
moved the  deadly  fire,  but  who  were  not  allowed  to 
go  out  to  assault  their  foes  in  return.    The  scout  and 
the  advance  guard  are  needed  ;  but  so  is  the  soldier 
that  defends  the  citadel  in  the  rear,  and  to  him  may 
come  as  rare  opportunities  for  bravery  as  to  his  more 
active  brothers  in  the  front.     The  man  that  runs  up 
to  the  cannon's  mouth,  and  seizes  the  flag  from  the 
hand  of  his  enemy,  and  carries  it  in  triumph   from 


92  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

the  field,  is  heroic.  So  is  he  that  holds  the  flag  se- 
cure against  a  hostile  grasp ;  and  he,  too,  who,  far 
away  from  the  noise  and  excitement  of  the  fray, 
unseen  perchance  by  mortal  eye,  bears  with  uncom- 
plaining fortitude  the  pain  of  a  shattered  limb  or 
the  burden  of  a  diseased  and  helpless  body, —  he,  it 
may  be,  is  the  greatest  hero  of  them  all. 

Strength  of  character  cannot  be  measured  by 
publicity  of  deed.  There  are  perilous  courses  of 
business  which  seem  to  invite  into  them  only  the 
bravest  blood ;  there  are  rare  missions  of  philan- 
thropy in  which  those  who  engage  must  needs  have 
peculiar  courage  ;  there  are  sudden  emergencies  in 
life  which  sometimes  call  into  public  distinction  that 
presence  of  mind,  self-forgetfulness,  and  daring 
which  specially  mark  the  hero.  And  we  are  apt  to 
think  that  it  is  only  amid  such  surroundings  that 
heroism  can  appear.  But,  perhaps,  in  your  nearest 
neighbor's  house  you  may  find  heroism  just  as  true 
and  triumphant, —  in  the  silent  submissiveness  with 
which  some  great  trial  is  borne  ;  in  the  patient  fidel- 
ity with  which  some  secret,  humble  duty  is  per- 
formed ;  in  the  serene,  cheerful  resignation,  telling 
no  tale  of  disappointment  and  sacrifice,  with  which 
the  heart  has  taken  up  some  heavy  cross,  crushing 
its  deepest  impulses,  at  the  command  of  conscience. 
Heroism  ?  You  shall  find  it  in  the  patient,  faithful 
life  of  the  woman  who  has  seen  joy  after  joy  depart 
from  her  side  ;  who  has  buried  the  bright  hopes  of 
her  youth  ;  whose  dream-castles  filled  with  luxury 
and  indulgence  have  vanished  before  the  realities 
of  hardship,  poverty,  and  neglect ;  who  pictures  no 


ENDURANCE  93 

longer  any  high  mission  or  large  place  for  the  dis- 
play of  her  powers  ;  and  who  now  gives  her  days 
with  consecrated  fidelity  to  some  hard,  obscure  ser- 
vice of  affection  or  of  duty,  finding  the  whole  of  life 
in  domestic  faithfulness  and  neighborly  charity  and 
kindness.  Heroism  ?  You  shall  find  it  in  the  man 
who  sacrifices  position,  friendship,  wealth,  pleasure, 
and  what  are  commonly  regarded  as  the  dearest 
objects  of  life,  that  he  may  live  true  to  some  one 
overmastering  obligation  of  principle  or  of  honor 
which  the  world  knows  nothing  of.  Heroism  ? 
You  shall  find  it  in  the  high  resolve  of  youth  to  over- 
come passion,  to  defy  temptation,  to  bear  the  ridi- 
cule and  scoffing  of  companions,  to  struggle  with 
unknown  difficulties  and  obstacles,  to  let  go  the 
fondest  personal  desires,  in  order  to  keep  with  honor 
some  private  trust  or  to  fulfil  some  pledge  given  to 
conscience,  or  given,  perchance,  to  a  mother's 
prayer.  Heroism  ?  You  shall  find  it,  perhaps,  in 
the  humble,  scantily  clad  service-girl  you  have  just 
passed  unnoticed  in  the  street,  whose  thin,  poor 
dress  covers  a  heart  rich  in  patient  endurance  and 
self-forgetfulness,  as  she  goes  day  after,  day  to  her 
wearing,  half-paid  toil  to  get  the  bread  that  shall 
keep  her  bedridden,  widowed  mother  and  her  young 
brothers  and  sisters  from  the  disgrace  of  the  alms- 
house. No  human  eye  has  read  her  story ;  yet,  if  it 
could  be  written  in  a  book  as  Heaven's  eye  reads  it, 
even  the  world  of  fashion  would  read  it  with  admira- 
tion and  homage,  and  count  her  among  its  heroines. 
But  she,  perchance,  cannot  write ;  and  so  she  only 
lives  her  heroism,  and  the  great  world  knows  noth- 
ing of  it. 


94  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

And,  if  we  are  to  judge  character  by  the  standard 
of  the  world's  purest  and  greatest  teachers,  which  is, 
also,  the  standard  of  our  own  secret  hearts,  shall  we 
not  place  such  examples  of  brave,  silent  endurance 
in  the  common  paths  of  life  higher  even  than  the 
great  deed  of  valor  that  is  blazoned  round  the  world  ? 
These  are  never  seen  of  men.  Their  left  hand 
knows  not  what  their  right  hand  does.  They  are 
encouraged  by  no  applause.  They  are  incited  by  no 
competition.  They  only  whisper  their  secret  in 
trust  to  God,  and  their  only  reward  is  the  conscious- 
ness of  his  approval  and  their  own  faithfulness. 

Wonderful  almost  to  the  miraculous  is  the  power 
of  endurance  which  a  single-eyed  devotion  to  duty 
sometimes  gives.  Even  the  body,  animated  by  a 
strong  and  serenely  heroic  soul,  becomes  less  sensi- 
tive to  fatigue  and  danger,  and  more  able  to  resist 
privation  and  disease.  I  shall  never  forget  an  inci- 
dent, in  illustration  of  this  truth,  that  came  to  my 
knowledge  from  the  career  of  a  private  soldier  serv- 
ing in  the  army  of  the  Potomac.  In  a  Pennsylvania 
regiment  was  a  young  man  who  enlisted  in  March, 
1864.  Two  months  afterward,  he  was  carried  to  the 
hospital,  wounded  in  three  places,  one  of  the  wounds 
depriving  him  of  his  right  eye.  In  August,  he  again 
joined  his  regiment,  just  before  an  engagement,  in 
which  he  was  again  wounded  and  carried  insensible 
from  the  field.  After  another  two  months  in  the 
hospital,  he  was  again  in  the  field  for  service,  and 
very  soon  was  one  of  a  body  of  men  sent  to  make  a 
demonstration  against  a  rebel  fort.  Placed  on  the 
picket  line,   he  was  left  there,  exposed  to  capture, 


ENDURANCE  95 

by  the   sudden   withdrawal  of  the   national    troops 
without  warning.     Discovering  his  perilous  position, 
he  crept  unobserved  into  a  small  ravine,  hoping  to 
make   his  escape  during    the   night.      But,    before 
night,  a  rebel  vidette  was  thrown  out  a  few  feet  from 
where  he  lay,  so  that  he  could  not  change  his  loca- 
tion or  even  lift  his   body  without  being  perceived. 
For  six  days  and  nights,  he  remained  in  the  ravine, 
—  the  enemy's   sentinel  posted  close  beside  him, — 
exposed  to  winds   and  rains  and  frosts,  without  food 
or   drink,   chewing  for  sustenance   the   leaves   and 
roots   that    chanced  to  be  in  reach  of  his  arm,  and 
fearing  almost  to  sleep  lest  he  should  attract  atten- 
tion by  some  unconscious  movement,  but  resolved 
not  to  surrender,  though  he    might  have  done  so 
with  perfect  personal  safety  at   any  moment.      On 
the   seventh  night,  the  enemy  having  relaxed  vigi- 
lance, he  crawled  on  his  hands  and   knees  to  our 
lines,   bringing   with  him  his   musket    and    all   his 
accoutrements.      His    feet    and   hands   were  frost- 
bitten, his  stomach  had  almost  lost  its  functions,  and 
one  day  more  of  such  narrow  imprisonment  and  he 
must  have   surrendered  to  death.     Yet  he  seemed 
not  to  think  that  he  had  done  anything  extraordi- 
nary, or  more  than  any  patriotic  soldier  would  have 
done.     For  myself,  I  could  not  help  repeating  as  I 
read  the  story, —  and  I  believe  I  made  no  irreverent 
application  of  the  words, —  "  He  endured  hardness  as 
a  good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ."     I  do  not  know  that 
he  was  a    "Christian,"   as  that  word  is   commonly 
denned, —  I  do  not  know  that  he  made  any  claims  to 
religion, —  but  he  certainly  showed  a  fortitude  which 


96  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

the  highest  martyrs  and  saints  of  the  Church  have 
not  surpassed;  and,  whatever  were  his  sins, —  sins 
of  weakness  he  could  not  have  had, —  they  were 
surely  forgiven  him,  since  he  was  ready  to  give  so 
much  to  his  country. 

But  such  fortitude,  it  is  said,  noble  as  it  is,  is  yet 
somewhat  physical.  It  is,  to  a  considerable  extent, 
a  matter  of  natural  temperament.  Another  person, 
equally  patriotic  and  brave,  but  of  a  different  phys- 
ical organization,  might  not  have  been  able  to  show 
this  capacity  of  endurance.  There  are  worse  suffer- 
ings than  those  of  physical  pain.  There  are  disap- 
pointments of  the  heart ;  there  are  bereavements 
of  affection  ;  there  are  wrongs  of  neglect,  suspi- 
cion, and  false  accusation  ;  there  are  heart  agonies 
deeper  than  any  caused  by  Death's  sharp  blade. 
And  to  bear  such  trials  with  serenity  is  a  higher 
test  of  strength  than  patient  submissiveness  to 
bodily  torture.  And  here,  too,  my  mind  recurs  to 
an  example  in  a  soldier's  life  that  came  under  my 
own  knowledge.  In  the  "Deserters'  Camp" — a 
camp  for  deserters  from  our  own  army — across  the 
Potomac,  a  daily  visit  to  which  lay  within  the  rounds 
of  my  duty  during  a  part  of  the  winter  of  1864,  I 
noticed,  from  day  to  day,  a  man  whose  strong,  honest 
face,  cleanly  dress,  and  general  manly  appearance 
and  bearing  indicated  a  character  quite  different 
from  most  of  those  with  whom  he  was  there  associ- 
ated. Finally,  after  a  direct  question  to  him,  I 
learned  his  story  ;  for  he  never  sought  me  to  make 
known  his  complaints,  as  did  the  rest.  He  was  a 
Maine  farmer,  and  had  served  from  the  beginning  of 


ENDURANCE  97 

the  war.     He  had  fought  in  most  of  the  battles  of 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  and  bore  then  on  his  per- 
son the  scar  of  a  severe  wound,  proof  of  his  valor  at 
Gettysburg.     In  consequence  of  this,  he   had  been 
transferred  to  the  Invalid  Corps  ;  and,  while  going  to 
the  post  to  which  he  was  assigned  for  duty,  having 
neglected    some   technical    military   regulation,    he 
was  arrested  as  a  deserter  and  sent  to  the  military 
prison   in    Georgetown.     Nominally,    he   was    a  de- 
serter :  really,   he   was    no   deserter  ;   and   his    case 
could  have  been  righted  at  once,  if  the  circumstances 
had  been  known  to  the  proper  authorities.     But  the 
proper  authorities  could  not  know  of  every  case  in 
the  Georgetown   prison.     And    so   the   unfortunate 
man  remained  there  for  weeks  in  a  small  apartment 
crowded   with  prisoners,  with  no  opportunity  for  a 
hearing  or  prospect  of  release.     This  was  his  reward 
for  three  years  of  faithful  soldierly  service.     After  a 
while,  he  was  sent  with  others  out  to  the  "  Desert- 
ers' Camp,"  there  to  be  kept  for  weeks  longer  with 
the  worst  class  of  soldiers  and  the  vilest  of   men. 
It  was  nearly  three  months  from   his   arrest  before 
his  release  came.     Yet,  when  he  related  the   affair 
to  me,  and  told  of  the  hardships  he  had  suffered  in 
prison,    and   of    the    difficulty   of    getting  his   case 
brought  to  trial,  and  of  the  worse  hardship  of  being 
charged  with  desertion  from  an  army  which  he  had 
been  proud  to  fight  with  for  three  years  and  from 
a  cause  which   he  would  give  his  life  willingly  for 
rather  than   it   should   fail ;   and,  though   his    eyes 
moistened  when  he  said  that  his  worst  fear  had  been 
that  he  might  die  there,  and  his  name  then  always 


98  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

stand  on  the  war  records  with  that  stigma  of  coward- 
ice or  treason  against  it, —  yet  he  showed  no  resent- 
ment and  no  bitterness,  but,  in  the  consciousness  of 
his  own  fidelity,  was  lifted  above  all  passion,  and  was 
as  composed  as  if  he  had  been  promoted  instead  of 
being  imprisoned.  He  knew,  he  said,  it  was  all  a 
mistake,  no  one  meant  to  wrong  him ;  and  then  he 
added,  with  a  brave  philosophy,  "  It  matters  not  how 
much  the  United  States  government  may  punish 
me,  or  what  charges  they  may  bring  against  me, 
they  can  never  make  a  traitor  of  me  ;  and,  when  they 
release  me,  I  shall  fight  for  them  again  all  the 
same." 

But  does  such  fortitude  as  this  seem  too  stoical, 
too  coldly  philosophical,  to  reach  the  religious  stand- 
ard ?  Does  it  have  too  little  of  the  joy  of  sacrifice, 
too  little  of  spiritual  consolation  and  hope  ?  Go 
with  me,  then,  again  to  another  scene,  and  see  this 
silent  heroism  of  endurance  transfigured  as  if  with 
the  very  light  of  the  opening  heavens.  See  a  man 
lying  in  a  hospital,  worn  with  wounds,  marches,  and 
disease,  nearing  every  day  his  death  and  knowing 
that  death  is  already  looking  him  in  the  face  ;  see 
him  there  surrounded  by  no  comforts,  only  with  the 
rudest  necessities  of  the  sick-room,  far  away  from 
home  and  friends,  the  fresh  soldier  hope,  that  pict- 
ured heroic  adventure  and  romance  and  feats  of 
brilliant  contest  and  victory,  turned  into  this  pallor 
and  feebleness,  this  emaciation  and  wasting  corrup- 
tion of  disease, —  see  him  there,  simply  suffering, 
enduring,  and  waiting  to  die ;  see  death  end  the 
scene  in  peace,  and  his  wasted  body  carried  forth  in 


ENDURANCE  99 

its  rude  coffin  to  the  soldier's  burial, —  and  then  turn 
back  and  read  these  verses  on  which  the  ink  from 
his  pen  is  still  fresh  :  *  — 

"  I  lay  me  down  to  sleep, 

With  little  thought  or  care 
Whether  my  waking  find 
Me  here  or  There  ! 

"  A  bowing,  burdened  head, 
That  only  asks  to  rest 
Unquestioning  upon 
A  loving  breast. 

"  My  good  right  hand  forgets 
Its  cunning  now; 
To  march  the  weary  inarch 
I  know  not  how. 

« 

"  I  am  not  eager,  bold, 

Nor  strong.     All  that  is  past. 
I  am  ready  not  to  do, 
At  last,  at  last. 

"  My  half-day's  work  is  done, 
And  this  is  all  my  part : 
I  give  a  patient  God 
My  patient  heart, 

"  And  grasp  his  banner  still, 
Though  all  its  blue  be  dim  ; 
These  stripes,  no  less  than  stars, 
Lead  after  Him." 


*This  incident  and  the  verses  were  found  in  William  H.  Reed's  Hospital  Life, 
then  just  published.  The  impression  there  given  is  that  the  verses  were  composed 
by  the  soldier  just  before  his  death.  But  the  soldier  may  have  only  copied  them; 
yet,  though  since  published  anonymously  in  many  places,  I  am  not  aware  that  they 
have  been  claimed  for  any  other  author. 


IOO  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

What  one  of  the  saints  ever  left  a  more  exquisite 
memorial  of  trust,  submissiveness,  and  peace  !  Here 
the  deepest  springs  of  life  have  been  touched,  and 
the  eternal  waters  flow.  If  the  imprisoned  soldier, 
in  his  power  to  bear  suffering  and  wrong,  gave  us 
only  the  type  of  a  sublime  stoicism,  this  dying  sol- 
dier certainly,  in  the  sweetness  of  his  submission, 
shows  us  as  fair  a  type  as  was  ever  claimed  for 
Christian  saintliness. 

But  do  I  seem  to  mock  you,  friends,  with  these 
examples  of  character  drawn  from  scenes  far  off  and 
from  opportunities  now  happily  past  ?  Come  with 
me,  then,  nearer  home.  Enter  a  dwelling  in  this 
city,  which  some  in  this  congregation  have  entered 
many  a  time ;  and  there  may  be  some  here  who 
know  well  of  what  I  am  about  to  speak,  but  to  most 
it  is  all  unknown.  Go  into  the  servants'  apartment 
of  that  house.  There,  a  few  months  ago,  you  might 
have  seen,  in  the  person  of  a  serving  colored  woman, 
an  example  of  patient,  heroic  suffering,  in  which  the 
very  strength  and  tranquillity  of  heaven  seemed  so 
to  mingle  that  an  influence  went  out  of  her  chamber, 
pervading  the  whole  house  and  blessing  all  who  saw 
her.  She  who  had  only  engaged  to  serve  with  her 
physical  strength  for  wages  became  at  last  the  gra- 
tuitous teacher  of  the  highest  moral  and  spiritual 
truths ;  and,  when  her  faithful  hands  failed  in  their 
office,  she  served  even  more  truly  than  before,  bring- 
ing gifts  to  her  patrons  on  the  wings  of  her  spirit 
from  the  very  gates  of  Paradise.  And  when,  after 
months  of  pain  thus  bravely  and  cheerfully  borne,  it 
became  expedient  to  try  the  last  hope  of  recovery, 


ENDURANCE  IQI 


and  she  went  to  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital 
to  submit  to  a  critical  surgical  operation,  she  showed 
there  a  fortitude  and  composure  so  extraordinary  as 
to  become  a  tradition  of   the   place.     So   far   from 
needing  comfort,  she  seemed  herself  to  be  the  sus- 
tainer  and  comforter.     Virtue  went  out  from  her,  to 
strengthen  those  around  her  better  to  do  and  to  bear. 
Theywho  went  to  wait  upon  her  wants  came  away 
feeling  that  they  had  received  more  than  they  could 
give.  °  Attendants,  patients,  surgeons,  were  awed  by 
her  marvellous  strength,  as  if   a  supernatural  pres- 
ence were  with  her;  and  this  humble  serving-woman 
became   the    Christ-like   teacher   of   professors   and 
learned  physicians,  of  men  and  women  far  above  her 
in  culture  and  social  rank,  and  of   all   the  humble, 
suffering   poor,  lying   on    their  weary  beds  around. 
She  died.     But  the  power  that  went  out  from  such  a 
life,  the  beautiful,  beatific  influence  of  such  virtue, 
can  never  die.     It  stays  still  upon  the  earth  to  help 
us  be  strong  and  to  mould  new  life  into  its  likeness. 
These  examples,  then,  of  'the  strength  and  grace 
that  may  come  to  character  from  the  simple  quality 
of  endurance  are  not  far  away  ;  nor  are  the  occasions 
past.     Is  there  any  person   here  whose  position    is 
lowlier,  whose  name  obscurer,  than  the  name  and  lot 
of  those  from  whom  these  illustrations  are  drawn  ? 
And  is  there  any  here  whose  position  is  so  high,  or 
so  well  guarded  by  wealth  and  culture  and  all   the 
facilities  of  external  ease  and  comfort,  that  suffering 
and   sorrow,    infirmity   and    loss,    cannot   reach    it? 
Such  examples  are  all  around  us.     No  one  of  us  is 
beyond  the  opportunities  which  call  for  this  virtue 


102  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

We  admire  it  always  in  others  :  let  us  secure  the 
possession  of  it  for  ourselves.  Who  of  us  does  not 
love  gentle  Charles  Lamb  the  more  for  his  patient, 
long  burdened,  but  unbroken  and  unmurmuring  sub- 
missiveness  to  that  fearful  calamity  which  darkened 
his  house,  and  for  the  heroic  sacrifices  he  made 
because  of  it,  all  unknown  at  the  time,  to  one  tender 
obligation  ?  I  pray  we  may  not  be  led  away  by  any 
arguments  for  the  rightfulness  and  sanctity  of  all 
natural  human  impulses  into  a  philosophy  of  self- 
gratification  and  self-indulgence.  I  also  would  pro- 
claim the  purity  and  sanctity  of  all  affections  and 
sentiments  that  are  genuinely  natural  to  humanity. 
But,  among  these  affections  and  sentiments,  I  find 
one  which  does  pre-eminent  homage  to  the  virtue 
of  self-denial  and  self-renunciation.  I  also  would 
preach  the  doctrine  of  self-development  as  contain- 
ing the  fundamental  principle  of  religious  growth 
and  progress.  But  I  see  that  the  way  to  self-devel- 
opment is  often  the  way  of  the  cross,  and  that  the 
character  that  is  perfected  to  the  highest  grace  and 
beauty  is  most  frequently  moulded  by  suffering  and 
sacrifice.  In  this  aspect  of  things,  the  lot  that 
seems  hardest  may  be  most  blessed.  There  is  no 
lot  so  hard,  no  dwelling  so  humble  nor  so  afflicted, 
but  that  heaven  lies  next  to  it ;  and  brave  endurance 
no  less  than  brave  doing  carries  the  key  that  will 
open  the  door  to  the  highest  of  heaven's  joys. 

September  30,  1866. 


VIII. 

CHILDHOOD'S   INSTINCT   AND   MAN- 
HOOD'S   FAITH. 

"  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  Except  ye  be  converted,  and  become  as 
little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven." — 
Matt,  xviii.,  3. 

Thus  did  Jesus  rebuke  the  petty  jealousies  and 
ambitions  of  his  disciples.  Holding  a  little  child 
before  them,  he  contrasted  their  selfish (  strivings 
and  vanity  with  its  guileless  unconsciousness  of 
self ;  their  anxiety  about  future  emoluments  and 
honors  with  its  fulness  of  joy  in  its  present  life; 
their  coldly  scheming  prudence  and  niggardliness 
of  affection  with  its  generous,  instinctive  trust  and 
outgushing,  uncalculating  love.  And,  from  this  and 
one  or  two  similar  sayings  of  Jesus,  it  has  come  to 
be  a  common  Christian  inculcation  that,  to  be  re- 
ligious, one  must  become  like  a  little  child.  But, 
often  as  this  sentiment  is  repeated,  I  apprehend 
there  is  a  very  vague  understanding  of  what  it  is  to 
become  as  a  child  in  spiritual  things.  Paul  said  that 
when  he  became  a  man  he  put  away  childish  things. 
And  this  is  felt  to  be  quite  as  important  a  truth  as 
the  saying  of  Jesus,  and  more  in  accord  with  the 
natural  facts  of  individual  progress.     Yet  the  heart 


104  TWENTV-FIVE    SERMONS 

of  Christendom  has  doubtless  been  right  in  holding 
on  to  this  precept  of  Jesus  as  containing  an  illustra- 
tion of  some  fine  religious  truth,  though  the  under- 
standing of  Christendom  may  not  always  have 
rightly  interpreted  the  illustration.  He  whose  eye 
was  quick  to  detect  in  the  lilies  and  the  clouds,  in 
the  sparrow  and  the  grass,  a  religious  lesson,  saw  in 
the  simple  spontaneous  life  of  childhood  a  natural 
revelation  of  the  truth  he  wished  to  teach  concern- 
ing the  spiritual  faith  of  manhood.  Perhaps  it  was 
only  the  simple  spontaneity  and  docility  of  the  early 
childhood  nature  that  impressed  him.  But  the  com- 
parison suggests  a  more  interior  analogy ;  and  it  is 
not  impossible  that  it  was  to  this  that  his  thought 
penetrated, —  an  analogy  between  the  trusting  in- 
stinctive confidence  of  childhood  and  the  serene 
faith  and  repose  of  true  manhood.  At  least,  it  is  to 
the  development  of  this  thought  that  I  ask  more 
specially  your  attention  in  this  discourse, —  The 
Analogy  between  CJiildhoocTs  Instinct  and  Manhood's 
Faith. 

The  true  point  of  the  analogy  lies  deeper,  I  be- 
lieve, than  we  ordinarily  fathom.  Indeed,  as  the 
comparison  is  commonly  drawn,  it  is  in  many  re- 
spects false.  It  is  superficial,  and  contains  more 
sentiment  than  sound  common  sense.  We  observe, 
with  something  of  envy,  the  freshness,  the  simplic- 
ity, the  unartificial  ways,  the  joyous  innocence  of 
children;  and  the  wish  often  utters  itself, —  "Oh 
that  we  could  have  our  blotted,  tattered  natures 
given  back  to  us  in  their  infantile  purity  again  !  " 
The  wish,  of  course,  is  all  in  vain  ;  but,  for  other  rea- 


childhood's  instinct,  manhood's  faith       105 

sons,  it  is  also  irrational.     It  is  but  the  old  lamen- 
tation that  ever  puts  the  golden  age  in  the  past,— 
the  crying  for  vanished  pleasures  when  nobler  are 
in    hand    or   within    reach.     A   man    can   no    more 
return   to   the  moral  stature  of  his  infancy  than  he 
can  to  the  intellectual  or  the  physical.     He  cannot 
have  childhood's  innocence  again  ;  but  he  can  have 
something  higher, —  manly  integrity    and    strength, 
matured  nobleness  and  power.     Every  stage  of  life 
has  its  appropriate  virtues  and  graces  ;    and,   while 
purity  and   kindness    belong  alike  to    all  ages,  ma- 
turity can  no  more  put  on  those  graces  that  are  the 
peculiar  charm  of  childhood  than  we  can    wear  in 
adult  years  the  clothes  we  wore  as  boys  and  girls. 
Besides,  there   is,  I   think  we  must  confess,  a  good 
deal  of  romance  in  our  talk  of  the  children's  inno- 
cence and  happiness.     They  are  innocent,  *Heaven 
be    thanked,    of  our  artificial,   hollow  ways  of  life. 
They  speak   their   hearts    right   out,  and  with  one 
true,  keen  word  often    prick  the  wind  out  of  many 
a  family  sham.     They  have  not  yet  learned  to  hold 
their  tongues  to  silent  lies,  nor  politely  to  speak  the 
thing  they  know  is  false.     Go  back  far  enough,  and 
we  shall  find  innocence,  it  is  true  ;    but  who  shall 
say  when  or  how  early  it  is  lost  ?     The  moral  nature 
seems  to  dawn  simultaneously  with  the  intellectual. 
And,  with  the  unfolding  of  the  moral  nature,   the 
dark   side   comes  to   the  surface  no  less  than  the 
bright.     The  infant  in  arms  displays  anger  and  dis- 
obedience.    The  boy  of  four   does    wilful   mischief, 
and  attempts,  perhaps,  deceit.     I  was  once  present 
at  the  "  christening  "  of  a  three-years-old  child,  from 


106  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

whom,  just  at  the  moment  when  the  clergyman 
read,  "  For  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven," 
there  burst  a  violent  ebullition  of  temper  not  com 
monly  associated  with  that  kingdom.  These  first 
manifestations  of  childish  wilfulness  and  error  may 
indeed  be  slight, —  mere  peccadilloes,  which  with 
wisdom  may  be  controlled  ;  but,  none  the  less,  they 
are  not  virtues  that  manhood  needs  to  sigh  for. 

And  there  is  often  greater  disorder,  bringing  pos- 
itive and  perilous  wrong  and  unhappiness, —  disordei 
that  is  inherited  parentally,  tendencies  to  vice  born 
in  the  blood.  As  physical  peculiarities,  features, 
personal  defects,  are  transmitted  through  long  series 
of  generations,  so  men  and  women  of  ages  past  — 
not  more  Adam  than  many  a  greater  sinner  since, 
nay,  men  and  women  living  now  —  have  sown  the 
seeds  of  crimes  which  generations  yet  unborn  shall 
reap.  Your  most  pet  and  private  weaknesses,  se- 
crets you  think  in  your  breast  alone,  may  stand 
revealed  upon  your  children,  to  publish  your  faults 
years  after  you  are  dead.  They,  indeed,  the  little 
ones,  poor  sufferers  though  they  are,  are  innocent 
of  it  all ;  for  we  know  not  how  many  generations  of 
sinning  men  and  women  have  sent  down  the  poison 
of  their  vices  into  these  little  frames.  But  inno- 
cence here  is  not  purity,  is  not  happiness.  Though 
the  accountability  be  in  the  past,  the  disorder  is 
none  the  less  real  and  present.  We  may  give  it 
a  sweet  name,  but  the  thing  is  none  the  less  foul. 
Such  childish  innocence  may  move  our  pity,  but 
hardly  our  envy;  and,  though  we  may  not  adopt  the 
hideous  blasphemy  of   "total  depravity," — of   man- 


childhood's  instinct,  manhood's  faith       107 

kind  born  desperately  wicked  and  fit  only  for  eter- 
nal   perdition  — we    may   also    avoid    the    deluded 
sentimentalism   that   talks   of   the   moral   graces  of 
the  cradle.     The  germs  are  there  in  the  cradles,— 
germs    of    almost   infinite  moral   possibilities;    and 
even  the  germs  by  their  tenderness  and  pliancy  are 
adapted  to  appeal  to  all  that  is  purest  in  our  natures, 
and   to   put    to    shame   that   actual    depravity   into 
which  the  habits  of  our  years  may  have  hardened, 
by  reminding  us  of   what   might    have  been.     Yet, 
though  infancy  be  thus  lovely  in  its  bud  of  possibili- 
ties, there  must  be  germination  and  growth  before 
the  beauty  of   moral   and  spiritual   life  can  appear. 
Such   life  is    not   born:   it   is  character  developing 
under  the  pressure  of  experience  and  of  moral  and 
social  obligations.     And,  even  if  childish  innocence 
were    always    inborn    purity    and    joyousness,—  as 
often,  indeed,  it  is,  even  the  flesh,  as  Emerson  said, 
being  "angels'  flesh,  all  alive,"— yet  it  cannot  pre- 
sent the  moral   stature  which    must   be  manhood's 
standard.     No  integrity  is  sure  which  has  not  met 
the  seductions  of   avarice  and  ambition,  and   stood 
unmoved  against  them.     There  is  no  real   chastity 
before  the  passions  tempt ;   no  temperance  and  sim- 
plicity which  have  not  proved  their  ability  to  exist  in 
spite  of  worldly  wickedness.     Childish  innocence  may 
be  lovely  and  fragrant,  but  it  is  only  the  blossom. 
Manly  virtue  is   the   matured,  life-sustaining  fruit. 
And  ripened  grain  can  as  well  go  back  to  the  time 
of  bloom,  or  the  scarred  and  weather-beaten  soldier 
leave  unused  his  hard-earned  victories  and  content 
himself  again  with   the   paper  cap,  wooden    sword, 


108  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

and  mimic  battle-fields  of  his  boyhood,  as  that  the 
natural  development  of  character  can  be  reversed 
and  manhood's  virtue  return  to  childhood's  in- 
nocence. 

Look,  again,  at  another  phase  of  childhood, —  that 
alleged  unconsciousness  of  self,  which  gives  to  the 
child  its  most  exquisite  charm,  and  for  which,  bur- 
dened with  that  intense  self-consciousness  they  would 
be  gladly  rid  of,  men  and  women  are  so  apt  to  long. 
Examining  more  closely,  we  shall  see  that  this  un- 
consciousness of  self  is  only  apparent.  By  physi- 
ological and  psychological  law,  early  childhood  is 
really  and  necessarily  confined  to  a  circle  of  selfish 
aims.  The  life  at  first  is  wholly  so,  consisting  of 
sensations  and  instinctive  efforts  that  go  only  to 
self-nourishment  and  self-protection  ;  and  for  several 
years  self  predominates.  Feeling,  thought,  play, — all 
aim  at  self-advantage.  Life  is  somewhat  advanced 
before  the  humanities  and  charities  appear.  Nature's 
first  object  is  to  develop  and  guard  the  new  individu- 
ality that  has  been  born,  and  that  afterwards  is  to  be 
a  voluntary  instrument  of  her  aims.  The  appear- 
ance of  unconsciousness  in  childhood,  if  the  paradox 
may  be  pardoned,  comes  from  the  fact  that  young 
children  are  conscious  of  so  little  but  themselves; 
that  is,  they  have  not  yet  distinctly  separated  self 
from  their  environment,  and  so  have  not  gained  a 
distinct  and  well-defined  individual  existence.  As 
this  separation  goes  on  under  the  experience  of  life, 
self-consciousness,  indeed,  for  a  time  becomes  more 
intense,  though  always  diminishing  its  proportion  to 
the  whole  momentum  of  life,  till,  by  and  by,  self  and 


CHILDHOOD  S    INSTINCT,    MANHOOD'S    FAITH  IO9 

the  external  universe  come  to  be  seen  in  their  true 
relations.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  that  forget- 
fulness  of  self  which  manhood  yearns  for  and  tends 
toward  is  not  the  unconsciousness  of  the  child,  who 
seems  lost  to  self  only  because  lost  in  his  own  joys; 
but  the  man,  having  discovered  his  relations  to  other 
beings  and  things,  is  to  find  his  satisfaction  largely 
in  forgetting  self  in  others'  joys.  And  so  self-denial, 
self-sacrifice,  comes  in, —  the  finding  of  life  through 
losing  it, —  which  is  the  very  extreme  of  character- 
development  from  the  first  stage  of  childhood,  and 
the  highest  reach  of  ethical  life  on  earth. 

Not,  then,  in  the  external  condition  or  external 
graces  of  childhood  do  we  find  the  point  of  the 
analogy  which  we  seek.  We  are  to  become  as  little 
children  in  some  other  way  than  by  trying  to  deck 
ourselves  in  the  children's  virtues.  For,  however 
beautiful  these  are  in  their  time  and  upon  the  chil- 
dren, yet  true  manhood  and  womanhood  have  virtues 
all  their  own,  and  quite  as  noble.  We  must  strike 
deeper  into  childhood,  into  its  -very  constitution  and 
essential  relations,  if  we  would  find  the  analogy  of 
the  text  justified. 

Looking,  then,  at  the  very  beginning  of  human 
life,  what  are  its  earliest  phases  ?  What  is  the  essen- 
tial, peculiar  nature  of  childhood  ?  We  shall  find  the 
most  distinguishing  feature  of  infancy,  whether  we 
look  at  the  subject  metaphysically  or  as  a  simple 
matter  of  fact,  to  be  instinctive  trust  in  and  reliance 
upon  what  is,  with  no  questioning  of  its  reality  or  of 
its  ample  capacity  and  purpose  to  meet  all  wants. 
The  infantile  life  is  divided  between  sensations  and 


HO  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

instincts.  Through  the  instincts,  it  is  connected  with 
the  external  world ;  but  only  through  its  sensations 
are  these  instincts  made  known  in  the  child's  con- 
sciousness. The  instincts  and  sensations  are  one  to 
him.  The  infant,  therefore,  at  first  makes  no  sepa- 
ration between  self  and  the  external  world.  He  is  a 
perfect  idealist.  He  knows  of  no  world  that  is  not 
found  in  his  own  consciousness.  His  wants  are  all 
supplied  by  some  unerring  power  working  through 
himself,  and  he  is  not  conscious  at  first  that  this 
power  is  at  all  external  to  himself.  The  demand 
seems  to  bring  the  supply.  His  faculties  of  thought 
and  of  voluntary  will-power  all  sleep  as  yet  in 
embryo,  and  therefore  in  harmony.  He  has  found, 
as  yet,  no  contradiction  as  a  gulf  of  separation  be- 
tween himself  and  outward  things.  He  lies  in  the 
great  lap  of  nature,  peaceful,  bound  to  her  by  the 
delicate  but  strong  tie  of  woman's  tenderness  ;  in 
harmony  as  yet  with  the  world  into  which  he  has 
come,  and  living  on  a  mother's  care  and  love  in  abso- 
lute, instinctive  trust.  And  here  in  this  perfect 
trust,  this  repose  upon  the  power  which  has  borne 
and  still  nourishes  it,  is  the  distinguishing  feature 
of  earliest  childhood.  We  may  call  it  a  state  of 
instinctive,  undeveloped  unity  with  nature  and  its 
laws. 

Now,  it  is  something  corresponding  to  this  in- 
stinctive trust  of  earliest  childhood  that  manhood 
needs, —  not  just  that,  but  something  like  it;  and  it 
remains  to  say  what  this  corresponding  condition  of 
manhood  is  and  how  it  comes. 

This  stage  of  implicit  childish  trust  is  very  brief. 


childhood's  instinct,  manhood's  FAITH       III 

Indeed,  no  sooner  does  individual  life  begin  its  de- 
velopment than    a  separation  begins  between  indi- 
vidual consciousness  and  the  external  world.     The 
beginning  of  such  a  separation  marks  the  genesis  of 
personal   life.     The   child's   instinctive   desires    are 
thwarted  ;  and  so  the  sense  of  a  separate  existence 
and  of  conflicting  aims  is  born,  and  nature's  conative 
energy,    which    has   been   acting   through    instinct, 
begins  to  shape  itself  into  personal  volition.     Men- 
tal perception  awakes  through  the  same  cause  ;  and 
by  and   by,   through    this    new   avenue,  in    gradual 
sequence,   the  external  world,  both  of  persons  and 
things,  is   revealed.     Other   instincts  also  come  in 
due   order   with   the    years,— tumultuous    passions, 
appetites,  ambitions,  and  all  the  practical  desires  and 
energies  of  the  period  of  youth  and  of  opening  man- 
hood.     But    not   these   alone:    a    higher   world    of 
thought  and  virtue  also  comes  to  light.     It  flashes 
in    upon    the    soul    through    perceptions   of    truth, 
goodness,  beauty  ;  and  conscience  awakes  to  stand 
as  sentinel  at  the  opening  ways  of  life,  to  declare  the 
sovereignty  of   these   higher   ideas  and   aspirations 
over  the  self-seeking  passions  and  ambitions.     Thus, 
the  human  being  becomes  gradually  equipped  for  all 
life's    offices   and   work.      And,    through    all    these 
phases  of  development,  the  separation  between  self 
and  the  external  world  has  become  more  distinctly 
marked.     The  object,  indeed,  at  every  step  has  been 
to  develop  a  stronger  and  more  powerful  personality, 
out  of  the  vague  and  chaotic  conditions  of  infan- 
tile existence  to  bring  forth  a  concentrated,  compact, 
sinewy    individual     organism   which    should    be    a 


112  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

new  centre  of  beneficent  activity  and  power  in  the 
universe.  To  this  end,  the  struggles  and  conflicts, 
and  all  the  fiery  trials  and  baptisms  of  this  earthly 
life,  if  rightly  met,  have  been  made  subservient. 
The  force  and  pressure  of  outward  circumstances, 
the  inevitable  laws  of  nature,  the  infinite  energies 
that  both  command  and  restrain  the  finite,  have 
furnished  the  resisting  medium  which  has  solicited 
the  efforts  and  developed  the  intelligent  power  and 
freedom  of  the  individual  soul. 

But  by  and  by,  in  natural  sequence,  there  comes 
another  stage  in  this  process  of  life-development. 
The  individuality,  the  selfhood,  is  established. 
The  faculty  and  power  of  a  free,  self-centred  person- 
ality are  achieved.  The  man  is  ready,  and  stands 
in  full  armor  prepared  for  the  work  of  life.  The 
question  comes,  What  shall  he  do  ?  Here,  on  one 
side,  are  the  passions,  the  appetites,  the  ambitions, 
urgent  and  tumultuous,  and  all  the  self-sustaining 
and  self-aggrandizing  motives  still  actively  pushing 
their  claims.  Shall  this  personal  faculty,  power,  and 
freedom  that  have  been  achieved  be  put  to  the 
service  of  such  masters  ?  Shall  self-aggrandizement 
and  self-enjoyment  be  continued  as  the  object  of 
human  life  ?  Nay,  that  ideal  of  a  higher,  nobler 
life,  which  has  been  forming  within  the  conscious- 
ness, starts  up  in  protest  and  forbids  such  a  con- 
summation. Not  for  this  has  nature  been  intent  on 
producing  this  new  and  wonderful  organism  of  the 
human  personality.  Itself  offspring  of  and  in  some 
way  still  vitally  connected  with  Eternal  Being,  it 
must  own  allegiance  to  the  law  and  purposes  of  this 


childhood's  instinct,  manhood's  faith       113 

ancestral  power,  and  live  for  them  rather  than  for 
any  transient  objects  and  pleasures  of  its  own.     Not 
self-preservation,  but  the  welfare  of   that  which  is 
infinitely  greater   than  self,  is  the  imperative  com- 
mand that  is  laid  upon  the  human  soul  by  the  moral 
instinct.     Hence,  as    man  stands  equipped  for  ser- 
vice at  the  opening  ways  of  life,  he  is  conscious  of 
an  obligation,  above  all  others,  to  serve  high  objects 
of  truth,  right,  and  goodness ;  to  exercise  his  power 
of  personal  sovereignty  on  the  side  of  justice,  integ- 
rity, beneficence  ;  to  so  live  that  his  life  shall  tell 
for  all  that  is  healthful,  helpful,  and  beautiful  in  the 
manifold  relations  of  human  society,  and  be  a  per- 
petually nourishing  factor  in  the  commonwealth  of 
mankind.     The  birth-time  of   this  obligation  is  the 
genuine  awakening  of   the   religious  consciousness. 
It   is   the   hour   for  consecration,  which  is4  youth's 
natural  act.     This  may  not  come,  however,  at  a  defi- 
nitely marked  moment.     It  may  advance  by  gradual 
increase  of  inward  enlightenment,  like  the  dawn  of 
the  morning.     But  it  is  a  period  which  at  some  timer 
in   some  way,  comes  to  every  normally  progressing 
soul.     And  whoever  obediently  follows  this  higher 
law  of  life  becomes  one  of  that  happy  company  of 
souls  who  help  to  make  a  heaven  on  earth.     Of  such, 
in   very   truth,    is   the   kingdom  of   heaven.     They 
enter  that  kingdom  not  so  much  because  heirs  of  its 
possessions  as  because  ministers  in  its  service. 

And  to  this  service,  in  behalf  of  the  eternal  laws 
and  purposes  faithfully  followed,  there  comes  finally, 
as  its  natural  fruit  and  consummation,  a  state  of 
mental  confidence  and  repose  corresponding  to  that 


114  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

implicit,  instinctive  trust  which  marks  the  earliest 
phases  of  childhood.  This  daily  intimacy  with  and 
service  of  these  divine  laws  beget  reliance  upon 
them.  We  come  to  rest  in  their  embrace  with  the 
same  unquestioning  assurance  which  the  child  has 
in  its  mother's  arms.  As  we  lay  then,  ourselves 
helpless  among  forces  that  might  in  a  moment  have 
quenched  our  existence,  yet  secure  against  all  hos- 
tility by  the  tie  of  motherhood,  so  we  come  to  find 
a  security  as  strong  and  as  beneficent  in  the  moral 
order  of  the  universe.  We  lie  restful  in  the  lap  of 
the  infinite  Bounty ;  and  though  hostile  storms 
may  beat  round  us,  and  our  hopes  and  endeavors 
may  be  shattered,  and  our  joys  may  lie  stricken  at 
our  feet,  nevertheless  we  are  at  peace ;  for,  like  the 
child,  we  then  trust  where  we  cannot  see,  and  we 
still  confide  in  the  universal  Bounty,  arranged  for  the 
best  welfare  of  all,  though  it  deny  this  moment  our 
special  wish.  Thus,  at  last,  we  find  rest  again, — 
rest  even  in  the  midst  of  life's  struggles  and  con- 
flicts, and  solace  for  its  woes.  We  return  to  that 
harmony  with  nature  which  was  the  first  stage  of 
our  earthly  existence,  when  there  was  no  conscious 
separation  between  self  and  the  not-self,  and  our 
very  instincts  were  the  direct  impress  of  the  divine 
energy.  Only,  that  was  an  undeveloped,  uncon- 
scious unity  without  personal  character ;  while  this 
is  a  developed  and  conscious  unity,  produced  through 
the  very  organism  of  personal  character, — the  indi- 
vidual voluntarily  accepting,  trusting,  and  serving 
the  Universal.  In  the  place  of  instinct  there  is 
now  moral  intelligence   and   faith.     The   blind  im- 


childhood's  instinct,  manhood's  faith       115 

pulse  of  nature  has  blossomed  into  conscious  voli- 
tion •  and  what  the  child's  instinct  was  as  pledge  of 
unquestioned  security  on  its  mother's  bosom,  that  is 
manhood's  perfect  faith  in  the  moral  security  of  the 
world  and  in  the  rational  acceptance  of  the  facts 
and  forces  of  the  universe  ;  or,  to  use  the  religious 
words,  in  Providence,  in  God. 

And  as,  at  first,  the   child   makes    no  separation 
between  himself   and  the  external  world,  but  finds 
himself  led  to  the  supplies  for  all  his  wants  by  some 
power  working  in  and  through  his  own  desires,  so 
the  man  or  woman  to  whom  this  lofty  mental  and 
moral  faith  has  come  can  no  longer  draw  any  line  of 
demarcation  between  the  human  and  the  divine  in 
the  life  of  the  soul.     The  idea  of  Deity  as  a  distant, 
awe-enthroned   sovereignty  in    the  heavens  has  for 
them  vanished.     They  know  of  no  gulf  of  estrange- 
ment between  God  and  man.     In  him,  they  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being,  and  he  in  them.     Then- 
very  prayers  are  the  pulsings  of  his  life  in  their  con- 
sciousness ;  and  the  answer  to  them  comes  in  a  still 
loftier  purpose  and  a  larger  measure  of  divine  life  in 
their  own  characters  and  acts.     He  worketh  hitherto, 
and  they  work  in  and  through  his  power.     And  when 
their  action  comes  to  the  limit  of  human  capacity, 
and  their  vision  fails  to  fathom  the  inscrutable  forces 
amid    which   they   must   needs   live,  they   yet   rest 
serenely  on  the  all-controlling  law  of  righteousness 
that  is  over  all,  and  through  all,  and  in  us  all. 

January  27,  1867. 


IX. 
PURE   RELIGION. 

"  Pure  religion,  and  undefiled  before  God,  the  Father,  is  this, 
to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in  their  affliction,  and  to  keep 
one's  self  unspotted  from  the  world." — Epistle  of  James. 

Such  is  the  definition  of  religion  given  by  the 
Apostle  James,  brother  of  Jesus,  first  bishop  of  Jeru- 
salem, head  of  the  apostolic  succession,  and,  after 
Jesus,  official  head  of  the  Christian  Church.  And 
yet,  notwithstanding  this  weight  of  official  authority, 
this  definition  has  generally  been  considered  a  very 
loose  and  heretical  one  in  Christendom  from  an  early 
date  down  to  the  present  day.  The  Roman  Catho- 
lic Church  never  did,  and  does  not  to-day,  accept 
this  as  a  sufficient  statement  of  what  religion  is.  It 
excommunicates,  and  in  times  past  has  tried  literally 
to  exterminate,  persons  whose  belief  concerning  re- 
ligion rests  simply  with  this  definition  of  the  Apostle 
James.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  believes  in 
works,  in  good  works ;  and  great  credit  is  to  be 
given  to  that  Church  for  the  various  works  of  mercy 
and  institutions  of  charity,  which,  both  in  its  corpo- 
rate capacity  and  through  its  individual  members,  it 
has  inaugurated  and  cherished.  But  these  are  not 
what  it  specially  calls  religious  works,  and  still  less 
are  they  synonymous  with  its  definition  of  religion. 


PURE    RELIGION  1*7 

In  its  view,  "to  fast"  on  certain  prescribed  days  is 
a  more  specific  religious  service  than  to  give  bread 
to  the  hungry ;  to  crawl  up  the  "  sacred  stairs "  at 
Rome  on  one's  hands  and  knees  a  more  religious  act 
than  to  help  the  lame  or  the  inebriate  to  walk  on 
their  feet ;    to    make    a   pilgrimage  of   devotion    to 
some  holy  shrine  a  better  evidence  of  piety  than  to 
make  a  pilgrimage  anywhere  for  the  relief   of   suf- 
fering humanity.     And  to  none  of  these  works  does 
it   allow  any  religious   merit  without   faith   in   the 
creed  and  traditions  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church. 
And  Protestantism,  as  a  general  rule,  still  more 
than   Catholicism    has   departed   from   the   Apostle 
James'  definition  of  pure  religion,  and   declared   it 
heretical.     Luther  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the 
Epistle  of  James  was  an  "epistle  of  straw,"  and  to 
doubt   its    genuineness   because  it  did  not  contain 
his  doctrine  of  "  justification  by  faith."     None  of  the 
large,   predominating  sects  of  Protestant  Christen- 
dom has  ever  thought  James'  definition  of  religion 
to  be  sufficient  and  sound.     Most  of  them  have  said, 
"It  isn't  religion  at  all:  it's  mere  morality;  it's  a 
snare  to. the  soul  rather  than  any  security."     Within 
the  past  year,  I  heard  a  learned  doctor  of  divinity 
in   a  neighboring  city   declare  from  his  pulpit  that 
the  merely  moral  men,  those  who  are  upright,  pure, 
benevolent,  full  of  kindness    and   good    works,  but 
who  stop  there,  and  make  no  doctrinal  confession  of 
religion,— that  is,  those  who  live  precisely  according 
to  St.  James'  definition,—  are  a  greater  hindrance  to 
Christianity,  and  do  more  harm  to  the  world  by  their 
example,  than    do  the   openly  wicked  and  criminal 


I  I  8  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

classes  of  society.  And  there  are  comparatively  few 
Christian  churches  to-day  that  would  be  satisfied  to 
admit  new  members  to  their  fellowship  on  the  sim- 
ple statement  of  the  Apostle  James  as  an  adequate 
conception  of  religious  duty  and  covenant  of  belief. 
And  the  churches  that  would  do  this  are  commonly 
denied  the  Christian  fellowship  by  the  greater  part 
of  Christendom. 

Now,  which  is  right  in  this  matter,  the  Apostle 
James  or  the  prevailing  sects  and  history  of  Chris- 
tendom,—  the  first  Christian  bishop  or  all  the 
bishops,  popes,  priests,  and  the  great  body  of  the 
Christian  clergy  and  people  since  ?  The  weight  of 
authority  numerically  is  certainly  against  the  first 
bishop.  But,  then,  it  is  also  a  Christian  tradition 
that  the  opinion  of  a  single  original  apostle  must 
outweigh  any  number  of  later  authorities  ;  that  the 
quality  oi  a  witness  is  here  of  more  account  than  num- 
bers. And  so  there  seems  to  be  but  one  course 
open  to  those  who  hold  to  the  view  of  the  majority 
of  Christendom  in  this  matter ;  and  that  is  the 
course  taken  by  Luther, —  namely,  to  discredit  the 
quality  of  the  witness  by  questioning  the  apostolic 
genuineness  of  his  testimony. 

But  this  question  is  of  comparatively  little  im- 
portance to  us  here,  where  we  are  accustomed  to 
consider  not  so  much  who  made  this  or  that  declara- 
tion as  what  was  declared.  Possibly,  the  Apostle 
James  did  not  make  this  definition  of  religion ;  — 
though,  from  what  we  know  of  him  through  other 
channels,  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  why  he  should 
not  have  made  it.     Yet,  possibly,  he  did  not.     Possi- 


PURE    RELIGION  I  19 

bly,  Luther  and  others  were  right  in  denying  the 
apostolic  origin  of  the  Epistle.  Still,  the  vastly 
more  important  question  remains,  Is  this  definition 
of  religion  true  ?  Is  it  complete  ?  Is  it  sufficient  ? 
And  this  is  the  question  to  which  our  attention  is 
specially  called. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  definition  is  some- 
what lax  in  its  terms.  To  those,  especially,  who  are 
accustomed  to  the  ordinary  forms  of  church  cove- 
nants, it  must  seem  very  latitudinarian.  It  does  not 
require  any  confession  of  belief  whatever,  says 
nothing  of  belief  in  Christ  or  even  in  God  :  it  speaks 
only  of  something  to  be  done.  It  defines  what  "  God, 
the  Father,"  will  accept  as  religion  ;  but,  among  the 
things  required,  even  belief  in  his  existence  is  not 
named.  If  this  definition  is  to  be  accepted,  religious 
fellowship  does  not  stop  at  Christian  limits,  much 
less  at  the  boundaries  that  separate  one  Christian 
sect  from  another.  The  definition  includes  in  its 
limits  the  devout,  moral,  and  benevolent  non-Chris- 
tian people  of  the  world  no  less  than  the  same 
class  of  people  in  Christendom.  It  includes  Epic- 
tetus  and  Socrates  and  Antonine  no  less  than  Paul 
and  Augustine  and  Bernard,  and  would  entitle  the 
former  saints  as  readily  as  the  latter.  It  compre- 
hends the  true  and  good  in  all  religions  ;  presents 
the  same  test  to  the  disciples  of  Christ  and  to  the 
disciples  of  Buddha,  and  draws,  without  reference  to 
any  dividing  lines  of  belief  or  forms  of  worship,  all 
loving  and  truth-living  souls  into  one  religious 
fellowship.  It  says  alike  to  Christians,  to  Moham- 
medans, to  Jews,  to  Buddhists,   "  It  is  not  anything 


120  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

which  gives  these  distinctive  names  that  makes 
religion."  You  may  be  called  Christian  or  Jew  or 
Mohammedan  or  a  disciple  of  Buddha,  and  yet  not 
have  a  particle  of  religion.  There  may  be  a  vast  deal 
of  difference  in  the  respective  merits  of  the  religious 
systems  which  these  names  represent,  yet  it  is  not 
adherence  to  one  name  rather  than  another  that 
gives  you  a  right  to  be  called  a  religious  person. 
Religion  is  deeper  and  older  than  all  these  systems, 
—  something  below  them  all  and  more  comprehen- 
sive than  any  of  them.  Find  that,  and  the  particu- 
lar religious  name  by  which  you  shall  be  called  is  of 
little  importance.  Fail  to  find  that,  and  the  religious 
name  by  which  you  are  known  has  no  efficacy, 
though  it  be  in  itself  the  highest  and  best. 

Thus  broad  and  comprehensive  is  this  definition 
of  religion  made  by  the  Apostle  James  :  so  lax  in 
respect  to  doctrine  that  theological  belief  is  not  once 
hinted  at  ;  so  loose  on  the  matter  of  a  special  reve- 
lation and  of  one  chosen  people  of  God  that  Paul 
and  Socrates  may  be  equally  included  in  its  terms, 
and  may  stand  together  as  fellow-servants  of  God 
and  fellow-members  of  one  Church. 

But  it  is  said  that  the  definition  is  also  unphilo- 
sophical, —  that  not  only  is  it  lax,  judged  by  the  com- 
mon standard  of  Christendom,  but  that  it  is  incom- 
plete, insufficient,  as  a  statement  of  the  religious 
aspects  of  human  nature,  aside  from  any  peculiar 
Christian  beliefs  or  claims.  It  does  not  cover,  it 
has  been  complained,  all  the  spiritual  facts,  expe- 
riences, and  relations  to  which,  in  the  development 
of  the  human  mind,  the  name  of  religion  has  been 


PURE    RELIGION  121 

given.  It  says  nothing  of  the  religious  sentiment 
per  se,  only  of  the  moral  and  benevolent  sentiment. 
One  might,  it  is  said,  do  all  that  this  definition  re- 
quires on  the  principle  of  seeking  the  greatest  hap- 
piness for  one's  self,  with  no  purely  religious  emotion 
or  aspiration,  with  no  prayer  or  belief  in  prayer,  with 
no  recognition  even  of  God  or  belief  in  a  God,  with 
no  element  whatever  in  his  conduct  springing  dis 
tinctively  from  the  religious  sentiment ;  and  yet, 
according  to  the  terms  of  the  definition,  he  must  be 
called  religious.  If  he  be  only  kind  and  just  and 
virtuous,  no  matter  from  what  motive,  and  even 
though  he  deny  the  very  existence  of  God  and  de- 
clare religion  to  be  nothing  but  a  mass  of  supersti- 
tion, this  definition  would  nevertheless  call  him  a 
religious  man.  The  definition,  therefore,  it  is  argued, 
is  insufificient,  absurd.  It  is  a  definition,  not  of  re 
ligion,  but  of  morality. 

And,  if  we  were  to  consider  the  subject  from  a 
purely  metaphysical  stand-point,  which  was  not  the 
custom  of  the  New  Testament  writers,  it  might  be 
admitted  that  there  is  some  justice  in  this  criticism. 
As  a  strict  philosophical  statement,  this  definition 
may  be  faulty.  To  give  it  literal  and  logical  com 
pleteness,  it  should  include  the  expressed  recogni 
tion  of  universal  or  divine  law  as  the  source  of  the 
conduct  it  commends.  Making  a  free  interpreta- 
tion, it  might  be  said,  perhaps,  that  this  recognition 
passes  over  from  the  first  part  of  the  sentence  to  the 
definition  itself.  But  for  all  practical  purposes, 
which  were  the  only  purposes  had  in  view  by  the 
writer,  the  definition  is  complete  enough  as  it  stands. 


122  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

And  I  am  ready  even  to  go  farther  than  this,  and  to 
say,  so  inseparable  are  true  religion  and  true  moral- 
ity, that  whoever  lives  according  to  this  definition, 
even  though  it  be  strictly  speaking  only  a  defini- 
tion of  morality,  will  yet  live,  in  the  best  sense,  a 
religious  life,  and  will  have  a  religious  nature.  The 
morality,  if  any  will  have  it  so,  of  the  life  will  dis- 
close the  religiousness  of  the  nature.  I  do  not 
believe  it  is  possible  for  a  person  to  live  consistently 
and  thoroughly  by  this  rule  on  the  selfish  principle 
that  from  such  virtue  the  greatest  happiness  will 
accrue  to  his  own  life.  No  mere  externally  pre- 
scribed code  of  conduct  for  producing  self-satisfac- 
tion, even  though  that  satisfaction  were  of  a  moral 
order,  could  generate  the  spirit  of  the  acts  which 
this  definition  describes  ;  and  it  is  the  spirit  which 
determines  the  real  quality  and  efficiency  of  deeds. 
Two  persons  may  perform  what  is  outwardly  the 
same  deed  of  kindness, —  may  be  equally  generous 
of  money,  or  time,  or  labor  for  some  object  of  charity, 
may  do  literally  what  the  text  speaks  of,  visit  and 
help  the  afflicted  with  equal  assiduity ;  yet,  if  one 
goes  and  does  only  from  a  sense  of  duty,  especially 
if  he  undertakes  the  part  of  benevolence  looking  to 
a  reward  coming  to  himself,  while  the  other  does 
the  same  things,  but  in  the  spirit  of  a  heartfelt  love 
and  sympathy  which  cannot  help  doing  them,  what  a 
world-wide  difference  between  the  quality  of  their 
acts  !  And  how  quickly  is  that  difference  detected 
by  the  persons  who  are  the  objects  of  them  !  Who 
cannot  tell,  with  regard  to  an  act  outwardly  kind 
done  toward  himself,  whether  real  kindness  of  feel- 


PURE    RELIGION  123 

ing  was  at  the  bottom  of  it  or  whether  only  con- 
science or  custom  or  still  other  motive  was  the  pro- 
ducing cause  ?  The  very  brute  knows  whether  the 
hand  that  feeds  it  has  love  behind  it  or  not.  Much 
more  does  man  know  the  spirit  of  the  deed  that  suc- 
cors him.  And,  in  considering  this  definition  of 
religion,  it  is  rightly  to  be  assumed  that  the  conduct 
described  has  its  origin  in  the  highest  possible 
motive ;  that  it  is  real,  inward  benevolence  and  in- 
tegrity and  purity.  And,  this  being  the  assumption, 
I  am  ready  to  say  that  no  person  can  live  thoroughly 
and  consistently  according  to  the  spirit  of  this  rule, 
whatever  his  lips  may  profess  of  belief  or  other  lips 
may  assert  of  his  non-belief,  without  being  religious 
in  his  heart. 

For  what  are  the  essential  elements  in  this  defini 
tion  of  religion  ?  They  are  plain  and  easily  stated. 
First,  is  good  will,  benevolence,  sympathy,  charity, 
love.  The  definition  says,  "To  visit  the  widows  and 
fatherless  in  their  affliction, " — putting,  for  greatei 
practical  effect,  an  illustration  or  single  specimen  of 
the  principle  in  place  of  the  principle  itself.  But 
the  principle  is  plain.  It  is  to  have  a  heart  and  will 
ever  ready  to  alleviate,  help,  comfort,  restore,  and 
bless  mankind,  in  any  of  the  manifold  forms  of  mis- 
fortune and  suffering  to  which  they  are  subject.  In 
other  words,  it  is  the  entire  spirit  of  that  love  which 
takes  us  out  of  self  and  merely  selfish  objects  and 
relations,  however  pleasing  and  satisfying  these  may 
be,  and  bids  us  feel,  think,  and  labor  for  others'  wel- 
fare and  happiness.  It  is  that  entire  principle  and 
law  of  our  natures  which  puts  us  under  obligation  to 


124  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

serve  others'  needs;  which  breaks  up  our  selfish 
strivings,  our  merely  selfish  aims  and  ambitions  ; 
which  teaches  disinterested  devotion  to  human 
welfare,  self-consecration  to  home  and  neighborly 
duty,  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice  ;  which  brings  the 
thousand  little  daily  acts  of  affectionate  remem- 
brance and  voluntary,  unrequitable  service  that  lift 
human  life  up  above  the  plane  of  a  mere  traffic  and 
barter,  where  each  is  seeking  to  get  the  highest 
price  for  all  he  gives,  into  a  real  communion  and  fel- 
lowship of  heart  and  spirit ;  which  brings,  therefore, 
to  the  human  race  the  bond  of  brotherhood,  and 
makes  the  rational  tie  of  society  possible  in  place 
of  the  gregarious  instinct  and  savage  conflicts  of 
animal  tribes. 

And  what  is  this  principle  but  the  very  genius  of 
religion, —  the  important  and  chief  thing  which  the 
great  teachers  of  all  the  principal  religions  have  em- 
phasized, the  thing  especially  which  Jesus  empha- 
sized ?  And,  as  it  is  one  of  my  aims  to-day  to  show 
how  far  historical  Christianity  has  departed  from 
Jesus'  teachings,  I  confine  myself  to  him  as  an  illus- 
tration. What  is  the  most  prominent  feature  of 
religion,  according  to  Jesus'  teaching  and  practice, 
but  this  very  love  and  service  toward  others, —  the 
helping  the  blind  to  see,  the  deaf  to  hear,  the  lame 
to  walk,  the  sick  to  health,  the  hungry  to  food,  the 
imprisoned  to  liberty,  the  suffering  to  comfort,  the 
erring  to  truth,  the  ignorant  to  knowledge,  the  vi- 
cious to  virtue,  the  degraded  and  miserable  to  light 
and  usefulness  and  peace  ?  What  but  this  very  kind 
of  work  filled  his  days  and  made  the  fruit  of  his  relig- 


PURE    RELIGION  125 

ion  ?  What  else  did  he  mean  by  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  but  the  advancement  of  these  ob- 
jects of  human  love  and  service  on  the  earth  ?  And, 
when  he  told  the  parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  it 
is  plain  that  he  not  only  meant  to  inculcate  that 
benevolence  and  pity  are  moral  sentiments,  but  that 
they  are  religious  also,  and  produce  the  very  highest 
fruits  of  religion,  when  brought  into  exercise.  The 
priest  and  the  Levite,  representing  the  formal,  punc- 
tilious, ceremonial,  much-professing  religion  of  the 
Pharisaic  Jews,  went  by  on  the  other  side.  They 
were  hastening  perhaps  to  their  formal  worship,  and 
had  no  word  of  cheer  nor  act  of  help  for  a  suffering 
fellow-being.  It  was  the  despised,  heretical,  and, 
from  the  Jewish  stand-point,  irreligious  Samaritan, 
that  turned  aside  to  proffer  the  needed  sympathy 
and  relief.  And  so,  all  through  Jesus'  life  and  teach- 
ing, it  is  not  the  outward  deed,  whether  it  be  called 
religious  or  not,  nor  the  profession  of  the  lips,  that 
he  places  foremost ;  but  it  is  this  quality  of  love 
toward  one's  neighbor.  And  who  is  thy  neighbor  ? 
The  reply  comes,  Whomsoever  thou  canst  help. 
"  By  this  shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  my  disci- 
ples, if  ye  have  love  one  to  another." 

The  second  element  of  religion,  according  to  the 
definition  of  the  Apostle  James,  is  signified  in  the 
words,  "keep  one's  self  unspotted  from  the  world"  ; 
that  is,  integrity,  purity,  sincerity,  incorruptibility, 
successful  resistance  to  all  snares  and  influences  of 
evil.  It  is  not  to  keep  one's  self  aloof  from  the 
world ;  for  that  would  be  to  violate  the  first  princi- 
ple, just  discussed,  of  sympathy  and  fraternal  help 


126  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

fulness.     It  is  to  live  in  the  world  to  serve  and  aid 
it,  and  yet  not  to  be  stained  by  its  vices,  not  to  be 
swayed  from  the  line  of  rectitude  by  its  flatteries  nor 
by  its  frowns.     "To  keep  one's  self  unspotted  from 
the  world  !  "    Call  it  simple  morality,  if  you  will ;  yet 
what  a  breadth  and  height  of  virtue,  unattainable  to 
how  few,  do  the  words  include  !     Though  it  be  simple 
morality,  it  is  no  easy  task,  no  every  day  phenom- 
enon, thus  to  keep  the  native  integrity,  the  mental 
and   moral    independence,    of    one's   being, —  to   be 
drawn  from  the  true  and  the  right  by  no  promise  of 
favors,  by  no  fear  or  threat  of  evil.     To  keep  sin- 
cerity amid  the   hypocrisies  of   the  world;  to  keep 
healthful    simplicity   amid   the    enervating    extrava- 
gances and  luxuries  of  the  world ;  to  keep  purity  of 
thought  and  chastity  of  act  amid  the  world's  moral 
uncleanness  and   licentiousness ;  to  keep  honest  in 
the  midst  of  the  world's  knaveries  ;  to  keep  truthful 
in  the  midst  of  the  world's  falsehoods  ;  to  keep  tem- 
perate in  the  midst  of  the  world's  intemperance  and 
debauchery  ;  to  keep  humility  in  the  midst  of  empty, 
worldly  ambitions ;  to  keep  contentment  with  slow 
and  honest  gains  in  the  midst  of  feverish  haste  of 
worldly  men  after  riches  at  any  cost ;  to  keep  self- 
respect    and    self-reliance  in  the   midst  of   cringing 
conformity   to   fashion    everywhere    found    in    the 
world ;  to  keep  independence  of  thought  and  action 
in   the   midst  of   fawning   subserviency  to    popular 
opinion;  to  keep  one's  convictions  of  truth  and  jus- 
tice, if  need  be,  even  to  the  bitter  end  of  dying  for 
them,  in  the  midst  of  tempting  bribes  of  all  kinds 
offered  by  the  world;  to  keep  one's  soul  loyal  to  its 


PURE    RELIGION  \2J 

divine  law  and  destiny,  though  the  whole  world  and 
all  the  kingdoms  thereof  be  offered  in  exchange  for 
it, —  all  this  and  more  is  comprehended  in  that 
phrase,  "  to  keep  one's  self  unspotted  from  the 
world."  "Unspotted," — without  speck  or  stain  or 
fleck  of  evil  to  mar  the  infinite  beauty  of  the  soul,  as 
we  might  conceive  it  to  exist  in  a  condition  of  per- 
fect purity.  "  Mere  morality ! "  Yet  it  holds  up 
before  us  a  standard  of  perfection  which  none  of  us 
will  dare  to  say  he  has  yet  reached,  and  which,  like 
the  horizon,  goes  before  us  as  we  advance;  ever  be- 
fore and  upward,  because  it  is  a  standard  embodied 
in  the  conception  of  a  Being  who  is  infinitely  per- 
fect. 

And  this  second  element  of  the  apostle's  defini- 
tion of  religion  is  another  of  the  essential  elements 
of  religion,  according  to  the  original  teaching  of 
Jesus.  What  is  the  one  burden  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  but  that  of  sincerity,  intellectual  and 
moral  integrity,  the  necessity  of  inward  rectitude 
and  purity,  the  uselessness  of  a  mere  religion  of 
conformity  to  fashion  and  tradition,  into  which  the 
heart  does  not  go  ?  If  there  is  one  thing  that  Jesus 
teaches  more  than  another,  it  is  this  :  that  men  will 
be  judged,  not  for  what  they  believe,  nor  for  what 
they  say,  nor  even  for  what  they  do,  but  for  what 
they  really  are  in  the  dispositions  and  affections  of 
their  hearts.  There  is  a  mere  religion,  which,  how- 
ever showy  in  its  forms,  however  brilliant  and  costly 
in  its  appointments  of  worship,  and  however  elo- 
quent in  its  professions  of  belief,  is  yet  as  empty 
and,  for  anything  it  will  carry  out  of  this  world,  as 


128  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

unsubstantial,  as  the  breath  after  it  has  pronounced 
the  words.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  a  mere 
morality,  which,  though  it  makes  no  pious  confes- 
sions, though  it  goes  to  duty  oftener  than  to  prayer, 
and  seldom  takes  the  name  of  God  on  its  lips,  and 
does  not  dare  to  call  itself  religious,  yet  grows  year 
by  year  in  strength  and  beauty,  ascending  from  beat- 
itude to  beatitude,  until  it  reaches  the  very  holy  of 
holies  of  the  Divine  Nature,  and  lives  the  eternal 
life. 

We  decide,  then,  for  this  ancient  definition  of 
religion  by  the  first  bishop  of  Jerusalem  against  all 
the  definitions  made  by  bishops  and  popes,  theolo- 
gians and  church  covenants  since.  It  seems  to  us 
to  cover  the  whole  of  human  nature ;  comprehend- 
ing, on  the  one  hand,  the  duties  each  individual  soul 
owes  to  itself,  its  obligation  to  keep  its  own  integ- 
rity, purity,  and  independence,  and,  on  the  other, 
the  obligations  and  duties  that  connect  each  individ- 
ual soul  abroad  to  other  souls, —  to  home  and  family, 
to  neighborhood,  to  society,  to  one's  country,  to  the 
whole  brotherhood  of  man.  On  the  one  hand,  we 
have  the  virtues  of  self-reliance,  of  moral  courage,  of 
loyalty  to  convictions  of  truth,  of  obedience  to  the 
inspirations  of  one's  own  soul ;  on  the  other,  we 
have  the  mutual  kindness,  good  will,  and  regard 
for  right  that  hold  communities  together,  the  affec- 
tions of  home  and  friendship,  the  sweet  charities 
that  carry  relief  to  every  form  of  deprivation  and 
suffering,  the  multiform  humanities  that  seek  to  es- 
tablish justice  and  love  between  man  and  man,  and 
to  improve  and  elevate  the  condition  of  the  human 
race. 


PURE    RELIGION  120, 

If  it  be  still  questioned  whether  all  this  is  religious 
work  or  an  evidence  of  religion,  I  reply,  in  conclu- 
sion, that  I  know  not  what  religion  is,  if  it  be  not 
the  'practical  allegiance  of  the  human  heart  and  life 
to  the  divine  law  of  life  ;  if  it  be  not  to  keep  one's 
own  soul  clean  and  truthful,  pure  and  upright,  ac- 
cording to  the  highest  consciousness  of  duty  which 
is  made  alive  within  it,  and  to  help  other  souls  to 
cleanness    and    purity,    to    truth,    uprightness,    and 
peace,   according   to   the   inspirations   of   that   love 
which  flows  through  us  to  bind  us  in  one  fraternity 
with  our  fellow-men.     Say  not  that  the  soul  thus  liv- 
ing, even  though  it  uses  few  religious  forms  and  utters 
few  religious  words,  gives  no  recognition  of  religion. 
This  very  integrity  which  it  has  is  the  energy  with 
which   it   adheres    to  the  law  of   eternal    rectitude. 
This  very  love  which  inspires  its  acts,  impelling  it 
to  constant  kindness  and  beneficence,  is  an  animat- 
ing impulse  from    the  very  heart  of    Infinite  Love. 
Let  me  have  that  integrity  and  that  love,  and  I  live 
day  by  day  in  serene  communion  with  Eternal  Being. 
My  desires  are    prayers;  my  acts  are  worship;  my 
kindnesses  are  sacraments  ;  my  natural  advance  in 
virtuous  effort  and  achievement  is  growth  in  grace ; 
and  death,  when  it  comes,  is  but  a  step,  composedly 
and  fearlessly  taken,  into  the  opening  secrets  of  a 
life  hidden  with  the  spirit  in  God. 

January  12,  1868. 


X. 

CHRISTMAS    LEGEND   AND   FACT. 

"  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth  peace,  good  will  toward 
men." — Luke  ii.,  14. 

The  legend  and  poetry  of  religion  are  often  as 
instructive  and  inspiring  as  its  sober  facts  and 
actual  history.  Some  of  the  most  indestructible  re- 
ligious truths  owe  their  preservation  and  influence 
upon  the  popular  mind  to  the  imaginative  and  dra- 
matic form  in  which  they  have  been  clothed.  And 
there  is  a  large  share  of  this  poetic  element  inter- 
mingled with  the  early  history  of  Christianity.  It 
is  only  when  it  is  claimed  to  be  actual  history  that 
it  offends  our  sense  of  truth.  Regarded  as  poetry, 
we  look  for  the  truth  beneath  the  imaginative  dress  ; 
and  our  sense  of  truth  is  no  more  disturbed  than 
when  we  read  Milton's  Paradise  Lost  or  Goethe's 
Faust.  With  the  eye  of  historical  criticism,  I  read 
the  Gospels,  and  see  much  that,  as  historical  narra- 
tive, must  be  rejected;  much  that,  if  claimed  for 
fact,  is  as  puerile  and  unworthy  of  belief  as  many 
of  the  mythical  stories  in  the  old  histories  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  But,  when  I  read  the  same  Gospels 
with  the  eye  of  religious  imagination,  which  looks 
below  form  for  substance,  it  reconstructs  the  dis- 
membered   narrative,    and    brings   back,    for    their 


CHRISTMAS    LEGEND    AND    FACT  I3I 

inner  ethical  or  spiritual  significance,  those  rejected 
portions   which,    when   considered   as   literal    facts, 
only  stood  in   the  way  of   truth.     Because  I    deny, 
both   from    the  antecedent   improbability  and   from 
the  defective  credibility  of  the  testimony,  that  there 
was  ever  a  man  in  Judea  who  could  summon  by  a 
word   the  buried   dead    alive  from    their  graves,  or 
who,  once  dead,  reappeared  in  his  natural  body  from 
his  own  grave,  I  do  not  therefore  deny  that  there 
was  a  man  in  Judea  whose  life  was  a  wonderful  ex- 
hibition of   the  supremacy  of   all  true  spiritual  life 
over  the  powers  and  terrors  of  death,  and  who  gave 
such  a  mighty  impulse  to  true  life  in  his  fellow-men 
as  to  confirm  them  in  a  desire  for  and  a  belief  in 
an  immortal   existence.     And   because  I  reject  the 
account  that   this  man  was  born  and  developed    in 
any  other  than  the  natural  way,  or  had    any  other 
than  natural  means  of  communication  with  God,  I 
do  not  therefore  deny  that  his  character  was  a  most 
marked    and    precious   illustration    of    the   way   in 
which    Divinity  may  normally  become    manifest    in 

humanity. 

And,  in  like  manner,  though  in  common  not 
merely  with  purely  rationalistic  critics,  but  with 
liberal  critics  generally  (some  of  them  believing  in 
the  miraculous  elements  in  Jesus'  career),  I  deny 
the  historical  authenticity  of  this  narrative  which 
purports  to  state  things  antecedent  to  and  attending 
the  birth  of  Jesus,  I  do  not  therefore  throw  the 
narrative  away  as  worthless  legend.  Here,  I  see 
that  the  imaginative,  poetic  faculty  of  religion  has 
been  at  work.     But  that  faculty  does  not  work  upon 


I32  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

mere  nothings,  in  Judea  more  than  in  Greece  or 
Egypt.  It  may  have  some  germ  of  historical  fact 
upon  which  to  work ;  or,  more  likely,  it  has  some 
vision  of  spiritual  truth  to  express,  and  will  take 
such  shreds  of  history  and  tradition  as  it  finds  at 
hand  for  delineating  and  embodying  the  vision. 
In  this  legendary  narrative  of  the  birth  of  Jesus,  I 
see  the  pious  imagination  of  the  early  Christian 
Church  endeavoring  to  construct  for  its  already 
idealized  Messiah  a  fitting  dramatic  entrance  into 
the  world. 

In  other  words,  those  primitive  Christians  found 
the  sober  garb  of  prose  entirely  inadequate  to  clothe 
the  emotions  of  the  new  life,  which  had  been  be- 
gotten in  their  own  bosoms,  and  the  ordinary  meth- 
ods of  nature  inadequate  to  account  for  that  new 
life.  Their  very  life  was  poetry,  drama, —  a  sudden 
transition  from  the  prosaic  occupations  of  tax- 
gatherers  and  fishermen  into  discipleship  to  a 
wonderful  religious  teacher  and  prophet,  whom  they 
follow  about,  day  after  day  and  month  after  month, 
in  town  and  country,  over  lake  and  hill,  to  catch  his 
minutest  words  of  instruction  and  learn  of  his  loving 
wisdom  ;  whom  they  accept  as  the  looked-for  Mes- 
siah, and  expect  constantly  to  see  elevated  with 
royal  pomp  and  authority  to  the  Messianic  throne, 
and  themselves  raised  to  corresponding  positions  of 
comfort  and  dignity  ;  whom,  with  bitter  disappoint- 
ment, they  see,  however,  after  two  or  three  years, 
executed  as  a  malefactor,  and  their  Messianic  ex- 
pectations apparently  brought  to  a  tragic  end ;  but 
then,  in  some  strange  way,  they  find  these  expecta- 


CHRISTMAS    LEGEND    AND    FACT  1 33 

tions  revived,  triumphant  over  the  grave  and  the 
cross,  and  themselves  lifted  up  by  a  mighty  spirit 
and  sent  forth  as  missionaries,  to  proclaim  the  ad- 
vent of  the  divine  kingdom  upon  the  earth.  How  is 
it  possible  that  they  should  put  the  beliefs  and  emo- 
tions growing  out  of  such  life  into  logical  proposi- 
tions and  historical  chronicles  ?  As  the  life  was 
itself  dramatic,  so  did  it  naturally  take  dramatic  and 
poetic  literary  forms,  in  which  to  clothe  its  experi- 
ences ;  and,  just  as  the  childlike,  spiritual  hope  of 
the  age  painted  a  vision  of  the  second  coming  of 
the  Messiah  in  the  clouds  of  heaven,  attended  by 
the  angelic  host,  to  close  the  old  dispensation  and 
usher  in  the  millennial  era,  so  did  the  religious 
imagination,  combined  with  that  primitive  faith, 
throw  itself  backward  and  around  the  infancy  of 
Jesus,  which  was  mainly  free  from  historioal  data, 
picture  scenes  which  were  deemed  befitting  the 
advent  of  such  a  majestic  and  benignant  life. 

There  were,  probably,  shepherds  on  the  plains  of 
Bethlehem,  tending  their  flocks,  when  Jesus  was 
born.  That  would  have  been  a  perfectly  natural 
fact.  Very  likely,  too,  these  shepherds  shared  the 
common  belief  of  their  time  and  race,  that  the 
Messiah  was  soon  to  come.  That,  too,  would  have 
been  natural.  But  are  we  to  believe  that  an  angel 
literally  articulated  to  them  that  the  Messiah  was 
that  day  born  in  a  manger  in  Bethlehem  ?  and  that 
then  the  heavens  opened,  disclosing  a  multitude  of 
the  heavenly  host,  who  literally  sang  in  chorus, 
audible  to  the  outward  ear  of  the  shepherds,  "  Glory 
to  God  in  the  highest,  on  earth  peace,  good  will  toward 


134  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

men "  ?  Shall  we  take  all  the  poetry  out  of  this 
exquisite  legend,  and  lose  its  fine  spiritual  truth,  by 
thus  translating  it  into  a  bald  statement  of  outward 
facts,  against  which  historical  criticism  and  science 
will  forever  protest,  and  which  the  common  sense  of 
men  will  suspect  and  disbelieve  ?  Let  me  read  this 
as  history,  and  I  read  it  under  continual  protest 
from  reason  and  the  sense  of  historical  veracity. 
Let  me  read  it  as  religious  poetry,  as  drama,  and  I 
see  how  the  "opened  heavens"  were  not  the  literal 
parting  of  the  skies  to  the  shepherds  at  Bethlehem, 
but  the  lifted  and  transfigured  vision  of  the  early 
Christian  believers,  a  full  generation  and  more  after 
Jesus'  birth.  I  see  that  the  opened  heavens  were 
their  own  illuminated  minds  and  hearts  ;  that  the 
angelic  presence  was  the  courage  and  faith,  the 
hope,  charity,  and  peace,  which  had  somehow  come 
to  them  from  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus  ; 
that  the  anthem,  whose  sublime  notes  still  sound 
through  the  generations,  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  high- 
est, and  peace  on  earth,  good  will  toward  men,"  was 
the  echo  from  their  own  bosoms  of  the  Beatitudes 
and  the  Parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan  and  the  story 
of  the  Prodigal  Son.  This  chorus  was  the  song  of 
rejoicing,  which  sung  itself  out  of  the  new  life  and 
inspiration  and  power  which  had  come  to  all  their 
faculties.  It  was  the  utterance  of  the  new  religious 
faith,  which  had  been  begotten  in  their  own  souls, 
and  which  thus  early  stamped  itself  on  the  primitive 
consciousness  of  the  Christian  believers.  But,  since 
they  were  not  metaphysicians  tracing  conditions  of 
mind  to   their  natural  causes,   nor   rigid   historians 


CHRISTMAS    LEGEND    AND    FACT  1 35 

narrating  events  only  for  the  sake  of  historical 
truth,  but  imaginative  religious  teachers,  anxious  to 
impress  upon  others  in  the  most  forcible  way  their 
own  religious  experience,  the  legendary  and  poetic 
faculty  of  the  age  readily  seized  upon  this  central 
truth  of  their  experience,  carried  it  back  to  the  birth 
of  Jesus  as  the  most  fitting  time  for  its  origin,  and 
represented  it,  with  all  the  dramatic  accompani- 
ments of  the  story  now  found  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, as  proclaimed  by  angelic  chorus  from  the 
skies. 

By  this  poetic  mode  of  interpretation  of  what  in 
itself  is  essentially  poetic,  we  may  preserve  the 
truth,  while  we  reject  the  form,  of  the  old  legends, 
myths,  and  quaint  beliefs  in  Hebrew  and  Christian 
as  well  as  in  other  religions.  Poetry  and  music 
have  an  inner  significance  entirely  apart  /rom  the 
form  in  which  they  are  clothed,  and  that  lasts  after 
the  form  has  become  obsolete.  It  is  thus  that 
poems  like  Homer's,  Dante's,  and  Milton's  keep 
their  place  in  the  world.  That  the  form  is  felt  to  be 
false  does  not  affect  the  truth  below  the  form.  The 
great  oratorios,  like  the  "Creation"  and  the  "Mes- 
siah," can  never  lose  their  impressive  sublimity, 
though  we  reject  the  theological  doctrines  that  cre- 
ated them, —  that  created  rather  their  dress ;  for  the 
soul  that  is  in  them  is  older  than  they,  and  used 
temporary  beliefs  only  to  give  itself  a  form.  Their 
substance  is  something  that  speaks  to  the  creative 
and  redeeming  spirit,  everlasting  in  its  nature, 
which  exists  in  man  himself.  We  may  enjoy  grand 
old  tunes   in    familiar   words    which    we    no   longer 


136  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

believe,  because  we  are  not  listening  for  the  senti- 
ment of  the  words  so  much  as  for  the  sentiment  of 
the  tunes. 

And  so,  when  this  Christmas  season  comes  around, 
though  no  one  now  can  tell  just  when  Jesus  was 
born  (the  festival,  in  the  earliest  ages  of  the  Church, 
was  a  movable  one),  and  though  we  may  not  believe 
with  those  who  instituted  the  festival  that  it  com- 
memorates the  advent  of  a  miraculous  personage 
upon  the  earth,  still  less  the  incarnation  of  the 
Supreme  God  in  a  single  human  form,  yet  the 
festival  appeals  to  something  within  us,  which  never 
grows  obsolete  and  never  loses  its  power  to  stir  and 
bless  our  hearts.  And  this  is  because  it  is  not 
so  much  an  historic  as  a  poetic  and  dramatic  com- 
memoration of  Jesus ;  not  an  attempt  to  revive  his 
memory  through  some  fixed  ordinances  and  speeches 
on  a  set  day  so  much  as  a  putting,  for  a  single  day, 
of  the  kindness  and  good  will,  which  are  associated 
with  his  name,  into  the  actual  conduct  and  rela- 
tions of  people  with  each  other.  That  is,  the  com- 
memoration is  through  the  actual  emotions  of  the 
heart,  and  does  not  exist  merely  for  its  literal  or 
historical  significance ;  and  the  heart  puts  into  it  all 
that  itself  feels. 

There  is,  certainly,  an  increasing  disposition 
among  all  sects  and  all  classes  of  people,  religious 
or  otherwise,  to  keep  Christmas.  This  cannot  be 
from  an  increasing  sense  of  its  being  an  actual 
historical  commemoration,  for  historical  investiga- 
tion and  criticism  lead  the  other  way ;  but  it  is 
because  people  of   all    sects,  strict   or   liberal,  and 


CHRISTMAS    LEGEND    AND    FACT  1 37 

of  all  classes,  religious  or  irreligious,  are  beginning 
to  feel  the  poetic  significance  of  the  season,  without 
regard  to  its  literal  and  historical  basis.  It  is 
enough  that  it  is  a  season  of  mutual  good  wishes 
and  good  deeds,  of  friendly  remembrance,  of 
family  enjoyment  and  the  strengthening  of  family 
bonds,  of  the  children's  glee,  of  neighborly  greeting 
and  fraternity  ;  enough  that  material  and  sordid 
enterprises  for  a  moment  remit  their  pressure,  that 
the  wrangling  of  parties,  the  strifes  of  politics,  the 
selfish  greed  and  ambitions  of  individual  careers,  are 
for  a  brief  period  laid  aside,  and  that  the  hearts  of 
people  are  open  to  gentle  thoughts,  tender  affec- 
tions, and  gracious  charities,  while  they*  take  each 
other  more  warmly  by  the  hand,  and  try  for  a  little 
time  each  to  make  every  other  blest  by  his  pres- 
ence. And  all  this  is  a  most  living  commemoration 
of  a  religion  whose  nativity  began  with  a  song  of 
"good  will  to  men."  For  this  is  a  vital  part  of  that 
good  will,  keeping  the  religion  alive  because  it  is 
itself  so  fully  alive  with  the  essence  of  unconscious 
religion.  These  poetic  associations  of  the  Christmas 
season — its  tender  memories  and  joys,  its  fraternal 
congratulations  and  charities,  its  actual  essays  at 
living  in  the  spirit  of  good  will  and  peace  —  are 
to-day  a  stronger  bulwark  for  Christianity  than,  are 
all  the  creeds  of  the  churches.  Even  the  mythical 
St.  Nicholas  is,  for  children,  a  better  introducer  to 
Christianity  than  the  historical  and  dogmatical  St. 
Paul  ;  and  the  loaded  stocking  on  Christmas  morn- 
ing, which  has  been  mysteriously  filled  during  the 
night  with   the   treasures    that  appeal    to  a  child's 


I38  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

heart,  is  a  better  teacher  of  religion  than  the  cate- 
chism. As  the  little  hands  draw  the  bounty  from 
those  wondrous  depths,  a  lesson  is  impressed  of  a 
religion  of  good  will,  of  an  exhaustless  sheltering 
love  and  generosity,  which  not  even  the  teaching 
of  the  catechisms  and  the  false  creeds  and  more 
wretchedly  false  practices  of  Christendom  can  ever 
quite  obliterate.  The  child  is  actually  living  upon 
this  religion  of  good  will,  though  his  consciousness 
is  yet  innocent  of  all  theologies,  and  even  of  the 
word  "religion";  and  the  glee  that  sings  in  his 
heart  and  utters  itself  all  day  long  in  his  prattle  and 
laughter  is  his  rendering  of  that  old  anthem,  "  Peace 
an  earth,  good  will  toward  men." 

This  anthem,  indeed,  which  was  sung  out  of  the 
glorified  heart  of  the  first  Christian  century,  and  is 
revived  by  an  actual  re-creation  of  its  spirit  every 
Christmas  morning,  expresses  the  purest  key-note  of 
Christianity  at  its  origin,  and  embodies  what  has 
always  given  that  religion  its  best  power;  for,  so 
long  as  we  do  not  say  that  Christianity  is  the  only 
religion  that  has  the  sentiment  of  love,  which  is  the 
essence  of  this  song,  we  do  no  injustice  to  previous 
religions,  but  only  state  a  fact  of  history,  when  we 
say  that  Christianity  particularly  emphasized  and 
put  into  specific  form  this  sentiment  both  of  divine 
and  human  love. 

The  Hebrews  came  to  religion  chiefly  through 
the  moral  sense.  Hence,  their  religion,  to  a  great 
extent,  became  a  mass  of  ethical  laws  and  ceremonial 
precepts, —  a  list  of  commandments  to  do  and  not  to 
do    certain    things.     The    Greeks   came    to  religion 


CHRISTMAS  LEGEND  AND  FACT        1 39 

chiefly  through  the  intellect.  Hence,  their  religion, 
in  the  main,  among  the  cultivated  was  a  philosophy, 
—  the  result  of  the  rational  faculty, —  and  among 
the  mass  of  the  people  a  mythology, —  the  result  of 
the  imaginative  part  of  the  intellect.  Christianity, 
which  mingled  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  streams 
of  religious  thought  in  its  own,  partook  of  the  char- 
acteristics of  both,  but  also  developed  the  higher 
characteristic  of  love.  It  took  a  germ  which  we 
find  in  both  of  those  religions,  and  cultivated  and 
cherished  that  as  the  chief  thing.  It  made  the 
heart  the  source  and  centre  of  religious  faith  and 
works,  and  declared  that  what  neither  conscience 
nor  reason  had  been  able  to  accomplish  by  its 
commands  through  the  Jewish  law  or  the  Greek 
philosophy, —  that  the  heart,  through  its  own  in- 
stinctive love  and  faith,  could  bring  to  pass  :  that 
duty  and  inclination,  reason  and  affection,  could  be 
atoned. 

And  it  was  this  doctrine  of  love  as  the  controlling 
principle  of  both  divine  and  human  government  —  this 
doctrine  of  love  as  "the  fulfilling  of  the  law"  — 
which,  put  into  the  concrete  and  dramatic  form  that 
the  Hebrew  Messianic  conception  furnished,  gave 
Christianity  in  its  origin  its  great  power  to  dissolve 
both  Judaism  and  heathenism  into  itself.  It  was 
conscience  and  reason  infusing  themselves  into  the 
affections  of  the  heart,  and  hence  getting  all  the 
power  of  the  heart  for  the  accomplishment  of  their 
own  ends.  What  a  relief  it  must  have  been  to  peo- 
ple burdened  with  the  ceremonials  of  a  written  com- 
mandment, and  anxiously  asking  whether  they  had 


I4O  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

complied  with  all  the  perplexing  details  of  a  law 
which  followed  them  into  the  minutest  relations  of 
daily  life,  or  whether  they  were  conforming  then- 
conduct  to  the  highest  demands  of  reason  and  phi- 
losophy, to  find  themselves  the  subjects  of  an  inward 
life  and  inspiration  which  swept  all  these  anxieties 
and  perplexities  into  its  current,  and  bore  them  along 
toward  perfect  blessedness  by  its  own  spontaneous 
impulse  !  What  a  joy  to  them  to  feel  —  not  simply 
to  know  through  their  intellectual  perception,  but  to 
feel  in  their  inmost  hearts  —  that  God  was  not  only 
the  Law-giver,  but  the  giver  of  every  good  and  per- 
fect gift ;  and  that  salvation  was  not  something  to 
be  purchased  through  painstaking  ceremonies  and 
works  to  satisfy  the  conscience  of  the  law,  but  the 
blessed  boon  of  a  life  born  of  love  and  bringing 
forth  the  natural  fruits  of  love  as  its  saving  works. 
What  wonder  if  those  to  whom  this  inspiring  faith 
had  come  felt  that  the  millennial  era  was  close  at 
hand,  and  that  the  heavenly  kingdom  of  divine  peace 
and  brotherhood  was  soon  to  be  established  on  the 
earth  !  And  what  wonder  if  their  childlike  imagi- 
nations pictured  the  heavens  themselves  opening 
and  angelic  choirs  giving  voice  to  this  divine  senti- 
ment which  had  been  begotten  in  their  hearts  ! 

And,  to-day,  a  new  baptism  in  the  spirit  of  love 
would  atone  for  much  that  is  irrational  in  the  creeds, 
and  cure  much  that  is  wrong  in  the  practice  of 
Christendom.  Modern  civilization  has  brought  great 
opportunities  both  for  individual  and  national  ag- 
grandizement. Its  material  inventions  and  enter- 
prises,  its  manifold  avenues  to  wealth,  its  wonderful 


CHRISTMAS    LEGEND    AND    FACT  I4I 

development  of  all  the  physical  arts  and  sciences, 
and  of  the  outward  resources  of  human  comfort,  re- 
finement, and  happiness, —  all  these  bring  not  only 
great  means  for  usefulness,  but  great  temptations  to 
selfishness.  There  is  a  corresponding  urgent  need, 
therefore,  to  arouse  a  spirit  of  benevolence,  of  devo- 
tion, of  self-sacrifice, —  a  spirit  that  shall  consecrate 
all  these  great  opportunities,  all  this  enterprise  and 
comfort,  wealth  and  knowledge,  to  the  welfare  of 
humanity, —  to  the  service  of  a  love  that  melts  away 
all  barriers  between  classes,  nations,  races,  and  re- 
ligions, and  seeks  to  bring  humanity  within  the 
veritable  bonds  of  one  brotherhood.  Most  especially 
does  this  Christmas  season  fail  to  impress  upon  us 
its  highest  lesson,  if  it  does  not  carry  dur  thoughts 
and  affections  beyond  the  circles  where  self  may 
still  be  predominant  into  those  outlying  regions  of 
human  want  and  woe,  where  the  warmth,  health, 
and  cheer  of  social  love  are  seldom  felt.  Not  only 
must  it  bring  refreshment  and  strength  to  the  ties  of 
family  and  friendship,  but  hospitality  and  impulse  to 
all  tender  humanities  and  charities.  It  was  an  old 
belief  among  the  Druids,  from  whom  seems  to  have 
come  the  custom  of  decking  dwellings  and  temples 
at  this  season  with  evergreens,  that  the  gentle 
spirits  of  the  groves  and  forests  flocked  to  these  green 
boughs  in  the  houses,  and  so  were  preserved  from 
the  killing  frosts  and  storms  of  winter,  to  resume 
with  the  coming  of  spring  their  re-creative  offices  in 
restoring  life  and  beauty  to  the  woods.  So  must 
we,  if  we  would  know  the  inner  significance  of  this 
Christmas  season,  keep  all  the  gentle  charities  alive 


I42  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

in  the  hospitable  warmth  of  our  homes  and  by  the 
glowing  fire  of  our  hearts,  in  order  that  we  may 
send  them  out  thence  into  the  cold  and  desolate 
places  of  the  world  to  help  on  the  regeneration  of 
human  society,  and  bring  in  the  era  of  peace  and 
good  will  among  men. 

December  26,  1869. 


XI. 

THE  EDEN  OF  THE  SENSES  AND  THE 
EDEN  OF  THE  SOUL. 

'   "Therefore,  the  Lord  God  sent  him  forth   from    the  garden   of 
Eden,  to  till  the  ground  from  whence  he  was  taken."—  Gen.  iii.,  23. 

The  religious  philosophy  of  the  Jews  represented 
this  expulsion  from  Eden  as  a  curse.    ^But  history 
and    reason    agree   in    pronouncing    it    a    blessing. 
Here  was  no  fall  of  man,  but  a  rise.     The  impulse 
that  drove  the  first  human  pair  out  of  that  dreamy 
and  sensuous  Paradise,— admitting  for  illustration 
temporarily  the  truth    of'  the   tradition,—  to    make 
their  way  in  the  world  through  their  own  efforts  and 
toil,  was    the    first    step   in    human  civilization  and 
progress  ;    the  first  step  in  the  long  series  of  con- 
quests  by    which   mind    has    gradually  asserted   its 
power  over  matter,  and  the  forces  of   nature  have 
yielded  themselves  as   aid  and  sustenance  to  man. 
Indeed,    there   is    some   intimation    of    this    in   the 
Hebrew    story   itself.     Though    the    eating    of    the 
fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  is  represented  as  a 
sin  which  is  punished  by  expulsion  from  the  garden, 
yet  the  direct  consequence  of  the  partaking  of  that 
fruit  is  declared  to  be  that  the  man  and  the  woman 
have  become  like  unto  the  gods,  to  know  good  and 


144  TWENTY-FIVE    SERM 

evil;   that  is,  the  act  for  which  they  were  exp 
from   the   garden    is  represente  is  their  first 

Godward.     An  I,  n,    it  is  said   they  « 

driven  out,  not  only  for  what  they  had  done,   but 
from  a   fear  on   the  >f  Jehovah    lest,   having 

already,   through  eating  of  the   fruit  of  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  become  .  knowing  good  and  evil, 

the  next  direct  step  would  be  to  "take  of  the  trc 
tnd  eat,  and  live  forever,"  becoming  there! 
still  more  like  Supreme  Being.      Now,  of  course,  the 
motive  attributed  to  Jehovah   in  this  account  — that 
of  jealousy  of  the  beings  he  i  I  to  have  created  — 

terly  unworthy  of  the  infinite  Being.      A     ord- 
ing  to   liter  views  of  God,  we  should  conceive 

•ne  of  bis  supreme  purposes  and  j  reate 

beings  who,  lik«-  himself,  should  live  forever  and  grow 
forever    into    his    likeness.      Hut    the     Hebrews, 
least  in  the  early  stage  of  their  history  represented 
by  the   Hook  of   Genesis,   and  for  some  time  after- 
ward,   had    not    risen    to    this    conception.     Their 

:est  picture  of  human  happiness  and  destiny  was 
that  of  the  Eden  from  which  they  believed  the  first 
parents  of  mankind  had  been  driven.  Their  highest 
aim  was  to  recover  this  primal  condition  of  life. 
Their  prophetic  vision  was  of  goodly  lands,  planted 
with  stately  trees,  showering  their  fruits  spontane- 
ously for  the  sustenance  of  man, —  lands  filled  with 
gold  and  precious  stones,  and  all  material  things 
that  the  human  heart  can  desire  ;  a  land  flowing 
with  milk  and  honey,  where  everything  that  man- 
kind could  need  should  be  given  to  their  hands 
without  labor  or  effort ;  in  short,  a  Paradise  regained 


THE    TWO    EDENS  145 

on    earth, —  a   life    of   perfect    material    satisfaction 
and  content. 

Yet  this  Hebrew  description  of  Eden,  and  of  the 
causes  which  led  to  the  expulsion  of  Adam  and  Eve 
from  the  garden,  is  instructive  by  reason  of  the  very 
contradiction  which  it  contains.  It  shows  that, 
while  man's  first  conception  of  his  destiny  is  that  of 
innocent  and  peaceful  enjoyment  of  sensuous  nat- 
ure,—  the  finding  all  his  wants,  appetites,  and  in- 
stincts gratified  and  put  to  rest,  without  any  mur- 
muring or  unsatiated  cry  for  something  more  or 
something  different ;  the  living  directly  upon  God's 
gifts,  let  down  from  the  heavens  or  pushed  up  from 
the  earth,  clay  by  day,  without  any  thought  or  care 
of  his  own,  and  with  no  anxiety  for  the  morrow  ; 
the  existing  with  childlike  content  and  happiness  in 
a  perfect  material  world,  without  toil,  without  trial, 
without  pain,  without  any  cloud  of  evil  to  interrupt 
the  sunny  days  or  check  the  warm,  blissful  flow  of 
this  serene  atmosphere  of  material  life, —  while  the 
traditional  story  of  Eden  shows  this  to  have  been 
the  predominant  primitive  conception  of  human 
happiness  and  destiny,  it  shows,  also,  that,  even  in 
the  earliest  age,  underneath  this  conception  there 
lay  the  germ  of  another, —  the  dawning,  namely,  of 
a  spirit  that  was  not  and  could  not  be  satisfied  with 
these  material  conditions  of  life,  however  perfect 
and  pleasant  they  might  be  to  the  material  nature 
of  man.  This  longing  to  taste  of  the  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge,  which  all  the  sensuous  delights 
of  the  garden  could  not  satisfy  or  lull,  though  the 
Hebrew  represented  it  as  temptation  and  its  grati- 


14''  TWENTY-FIVE    SERlfi 

fication  as  sin,  and  which,  when  gratified,  opened 
the  understanding  of  the  first  parents  to  know 
between  good  and  evil, —  and  to  be,  therefore,  like 
the  Creator  himself, —  what  was  this  but  the  dawn 
of  moral  intelligence,  the  awakening  of  conscience, 
the  springing  to  consciousness  ol  a  principle  in  man 
which  was  not  taken  from  the  dust,  whence  his 
body  came,  and  which  could  not  therefore  be  satis- 
fied with  mere  material  gratifications  or  find  its 
iny  in  the  conditions  of  a  material  life,  however 
perfect?  What  was  it  but  just  what  the  writer  in 
primitive  simplicity,  regardless  of  the  logical  con- 
fusion and  contradiction  of  thought,  intimated, —  the 
awakening  of  a  power  within  that  material  frame- 
work of  bones  and  flesh,  which  could  discern  the 
eternal  difference  between  good  and  evil,  between 
right  and  wrong,  between  truth  and  error, —  a  power 
which  could  discern  and  weigh  ideas,  which  was 
capable  not  merely  of  sensation  and  enjoyment,  like 
the  body,  but  of  thought  and  aspiration  and  will, —  a 
power  which  made  man  like  unto  God,  because 
it  was  the  stirring  of  a  spirit  within  him  which  was 
akin  to  Eternal  Spirit  itself  —  nay,  identical  with  it 
—  and  which  made  man  a  living  soul?  And  the 
author  of  this  primitive  description  was  again  right, 
when  he  intimated  that  the  eating  of  the  tree 
of  knowledge  by  man,  which  was  the  dawning 
of  the  moral  intelligence,  would  lead  him  to  put 
forth  his  hand  and  take  of  the  tree  of  life,  and  eat  of 
that,  and  live  forever.  For  the  awakening  of  the 
moral  intelligence,  being  the  birth  in  man  of  eternal 
soirit,  brings    longings,  aspirations,   and    capacities, 


THE    TWO    EDEXS  1 47 

which  only  spiritual  realities  can  nourish  and  feed, 
which  only  immortality  can  interpret  and  satisfy. 

And    the    Hebrew    was    right,    again,    when    he 
represented  man  as  driven  out  of  Eden,  that  para- 
dise   of    the    senses,    because    of    this    awakening 
within   him  of  the  ambitious   desire   to  eat  of   the 
tree  of  life  and  be  immortal  like   the  gods  ;    right, 
too,    in    saying  that  it   was    the   Divine   Spirit  that 
drove    him    forth  ;     only    there     was     an    illogical 
confusion,    incident    to    the    religious    thought    of 
the    age,   in  respect   to  the  reason  and  significance 
of   the   act.     So   far  from   being  driven  out  of   the 
garden  as  a  punishment  and  curse  upon  them,  these 
first  ancestors  of  mankind  went  forth  to  be  blessed, 
and  to  bless  their  race  after  them.     Tne  God  that 
drove  them  out  was  no  being  in  the  heavens,  ruling 
them  as  a  retributive  judge,  but  the  God  that  had 
been  awakened  to  consciousness  within  themselves. 
The  impulse  that  led  them  forth  from  those  scenes 
of  enjoyment  and  peace   into  the  world  of  toil  and 
trial  and  care  was  the  gesture  of  the  Godlike  spirit 
within  their  own  souls  ;  and,  when  the  gate  of  that 
earthly   paradise    opened    to    send    them    on    their 
journey    into    the    rough    wilderness    of    the    world, 
and  was  barred  against  their  return,  then  began  the 
march  of  humanity  heavenward  and  Godward. 

Not  a  fall,  then,  but  a  rise,  was  the  departure 
from  Eden.  It  was  the  necessary  result  of  man's 
coming  to  consciousness  of  his  moral  resources, 
of  his  spiritual  relationship  and  destiny.  It  was 
simply  impossible  that  a  being  created  with  mental 
and  moral  aspirations  could  remain  content  with  the 


TWENTY-FH 

that  Eden  afforded.     Let  itbe,— though 

iv  and  an  d  igy  will  not  confirm  the  proposil 
—  yet  let  it   be  admitted  that  man  was  first 

in    the    hippy   serenity   and    childlike    perfection   o\ 
innocence  which  the  tradition  re  Let    I 

that   his  dwelling-place  was  as  full  of   beauty  and 
:  j  possibl  irth  to  be, — 

that  there,  as  the  story  says,  gr  that 

is  pleasant  to  the  sight,  and  good  for  food";  that 

1   and   bdellium   and   the  onyx,"  and   every 
cious  stone,  were  to  he  found   there,  without   search 
and  without  labor;   that  the  garden  was  plentifully 
watered  with    the   most    beautiful   of   rivers;    that   it 
was    StOi  ked    with    every    kind    of    animal    for 
or    pleasure,    all    living    together    in     harmony    and 
mutual   helpfulness;    that   it   was   darkened   with   no 
clouds,    afflicted    with     no     storms,    marred     by     no 
noxious  weed,  absolutely  impervious   to  any  ph\ 
derangement  or  evil.      What  then  ?     Would   this  be 
the   residence  that  a  soul   of   immortal    aspirations 
would  choose  ?     These  are  all  materi  d  delights,  and 
nothing  more.      Had  Adam   remained   content  with 
these,  he  never  would  have  been  father  of  the  human 
race,  only  of  another,  and   perhaps    a  little  higher, 
race    of   animals.      Had    Adam    been    content    with 
these,    his    descendants,    perhaps,    might    have    re- 
mained in   Eden  and  had  Eden   to  this  day.     They 
would    have    had    Eden,  but   nothing  more.      It  was 
just  that   within  him  which  made  him   man   which 
made  him  also   dissatisfied  with  Eden's  limitations 
and  with    its    serene,  perfect  life  of    material  bliss. 
To    the    living    soul,    akin    to    infinite    Soul,    there 


THE    TWO    EDENS  I49 

can  be  no  serenity,  no  satisfaction,  no  peace,  no 
perfection,  except  in  ascent  toward  infinite  perfec- 
tion. Any  stationary  condition  of  things,  however 
perfect  in  itself,  can  never  give  peace  to  a  being 
whose  sense  of  perfection  is  only  to  be  met  by 
constant  endeavor  and  movement  upward.  Vain, 
therefore,  the  expectation  that  a  being,  in  whom 
a  vital  intellectual  and  moral  nature  has  been  born, 
can  be  kept  content  within  any  earthly  Eden's 
walls.  Put  all  the  treasures  of  all  earth's  gardens 
into  one,  and  still  it  will  not  be  the  garden  that  can 
keep  a  being  in  whom  the  power  of  immortal 
thought  has  dawned.  It  was  not  Adam's  sin,  but 
his  and  humanity's  salvation,  when  he  aspired  to 
taste  of  the  fruit  growing  on  the  tree  of  knowledge, 
whose  branches  reached  over  Eden's  walls  into  the 
great  universe  outside,  and  whose  top  pointed 
heavenward,  into  the  infinite  spaces  ;  for,  thereby, 
he  parted  company  with  the  type  of  animal  races 
that  had  existed  before  him,  left  behind  mere  ma- 
terial satisfactions  as  no  longer  sufficient  to  nourish 
his  nature,  and  began  the  career  of  a  moral  being. 
He  left  Eden  to  enter  heaven. 

Does  any  one  doubt  this  ?  Shrink  from  accepting 
the  world  as  it  has  been,  with  its  roughness  and 
hardness,  with  its  physical  and  moral  evils,  with 
its  struggles  and  failures,  with  its  suffering,  and 
its  sorrow,  its  death  and  its  graves,  as  better 
than  that  serene  picture  of  life  in  Eden,  where 
toil  and  struggle,  death  and  suffering,  were  un- 
known ?  Let  him,  then,  compare  the  virtues  which 
could  flourish  in  the  still  atmosphere  of  that  guarded 


I5O  TWIN  I  \  -II 

enclosure   with   the  virtues   that   he   most   ad  mi 
in  the  history  of  mankind  as  it  has  actually  been. 
Let  him  compare  that  passiveness  with  this  constant 
activity;  that  calm  content  with  what  is  with  this 
intense  joy  of  anticipating  and  seek 

■r;    that    undisturbed,    listles  ment   ol 

good  possessed  with  this  heroic  endeavor  to  | 
something  beyond  present  reach;  that  re 
of  blessing  with  this  effort  t  .    that  resting  in 

the    car.-    of    an    1  .1    will    with    this    v. 

forth  of  native  strength   and  energy;  that 

in    each    day's  delight  with  this  I  nth, 

and  hope  that  are  read)  to  attempt  all  things  ;  that 
serenity  with  tins  endurance;  that  bliss  of  having 
with  this  bliss  of  doing;  that  childhood's  innocence 
and  grace  with  this  manhood's  proved  integrity  and 
power;  that  satisfaction  with  a  world  complete  with 
this  noble  struggle  and  progress  in  the  endi 
complete  a  world;  that  I  tion  with  Unite  ami 
material  ends  with  these  thoughts,  aspirations,  and 
purposes  that  only  never  rest,  because  drawn  upward 
by  a  path  that  loses  itself  in  the  | 
finite  intelligence.  Humanity  in  Eden  would  have 
been  scarcely  above  the  "  happy  family  "  of  animals 
which  the  showman  has  trained  to  live  amicably 
together  in  his  menagerie.  But  humanity  driven  out 
into  the  world,  to  live  by  the  sweat  of  its  brow 
in  rough  struggles  with  nature,  has  turned  the 
wilderness  into  a  garden,  made  a  highway  for  its 
thought  over  mountain  and  sea,  bended  the  elements 
to  its  service,  and  shaped  the  inhospitable  earth  to  its 
needs  ;  and  thereby  it  has  disclosed  and  developed 


THE    TWO    EDEXS  15  I 

a  power  that  is  verily  Godlike  in  its  quality  and 
purpose. 

So,  too,  the  persons  who  have  departed  farthest 
from  the  conditions  of  life  in  Eden,  who  have  had 
least  rest  and  most  service,  who  have  even  denied 
themselves  all  material  and  temporal  satisfactions 
that  they  might  eat  the  more  freely  of  the  pure 
knowledge  of  spiritual  things,  who  have  endured 
perils  and  tortures,  and  death  even,  in  their  conflict 
with  the  world,  rather  than  go  back  to  the  Eden 
from  which  the  divine  discontent  in  their  own  souls 
had  driven  them, —  these  persons,  the  Socrates,  the 
Pauls,  the  Buddhas,  the  Christs,  are  the  heroes  of 
this  human  march  heavenward  that  most  challenge 
our  admiration  and  excite  our  enthusiasm  to  imitate. 
Yes :  notwithstanding  all  the  hardship,  bitterness, 
and  misery  that  burdened  humanity  has  had  to  meet 
in  its  struggle  with  the  rough  conditions  of  exist- 
ence, remembering  even  the  fearful  errors  and  sins 
into  which  it  has  fallen  in  the  uncertain  chances  of 
the  conflict,  our  secret  hearts  do  yet  declare  for  the 
heaven  which  is  to  be  won  through  labor  and  sacri- 
fice rather  than  for  that  which  is  given  in  the  invol- 
untary gratification  of  natural  instincts. 

And  what  is  thus  seen  to  be  true  with  regard  to 
the  race  historically  is  true  also  in  individual  expe- 
rience. Nature's  inexorable  rule  is, —  Pay  for  all  you 
get :  take  bountifully,  unceasingly,  of  her  stores,  but 
give  faithfully  and  unsparingly  the  labor  of  muscle  or 
brain  or  heart  for  every  atom  of  her  wealth.  Every 
human  achievement  or  pleasure  has  its  price.  Even 
virtue  is  not  given,  but   must  be  toiled  for, —  must 


rned  and  purchased  by  constant  resolution  and 
sacrifice.  And  those  possessions  will  soon  slip  from 
Us  —  are  hardly,  indeed,  worth  the  holding  —  Eor 
which  we  have  not  paid  the  cost  They  are  not 
really  ours;  and  hence  nature's  laws,  always  hoi 
and   sagacious,   contrive    quickly   to    strip   us   of   the 

ownership.     Even  on  the  plane  of  matei 

,  in  spite  of  the  apparent  glaring  exceptions, 

the    law   in    general    holds    true.     The  rbial 

savin-,  that   a  fortune  which   quickly  conies  qu 

•■     •  i  the  common  belief  in  the  necessity  of 

labor  to  give  a  sure  title  to  ownership  in  material 
wealth.  There  is  not  a  father  here  who  does  not 
know,  whatever  his  practice  is  likely  to  be,  that 
it   is   vastly   better   for   ;  life 

with  only  the  wealth  of  strong  hands,  sound  brains, 
and  upright,  courageous  hearts,  than,  without  an 
•  of  their  own,  to  have  a  millionnaire's  fortune 
poured  into  their  laps  as  capital.  For  Strong  hands. 
sound  brains,  and  the  pure,  brave  heart  are  not  only 
able  to   buy   the   best   esl  I    earth,  but   can  pur- 

chase virtue,  freedom,  and  heaven.  Give  your  son 
wealth  without  the  mental  and  moral  qualities  that 
can  so  use  wealth  as  to  pay  back  every  cent  of  it 
into  the  treasury  of  the  world's  commonweal,  and. 
though  he  ride  in  his  carriage  and  revel  in  luxury, 
you  curse  him  with  a  poverty  worse  than  that  which 
drives  the  beggar  hungry  and  foot-sore  through  the 
streets.  And  the  probability  is  that  nature  will  soon 
set  about  to  rectify  your  mistake,  and  will  vindicate 
her  law, — that  there  can  be  no  ownership  without  pay- 
ing for  the  title  ;  will  set  about  the  task  in  paternal 


THE    TWO    EDEN'S  153 

mercy,  too,  divesting  the  poor  millionnaire  of  his 
unpaid  goods,  scattering  his  wealth,  removing  one 
by  one  his  luxuries,  and  by  and  by  driving  him  out 
of  his  Eden  of  rest  and  pleasure,  to  begin  life  empty- 
handed  and  to  earn  its  blessings  as  he  goes, —  but 
thereby  to  save  his  soul. 

And,  if  this  is  so  in  material  things,  much  more  is 
it  true  in  respect  to  moral  and  spiritual  possessions  ; 
for  moral  and  spiritual  possessions  are  not  so  much 
gifts  or  external  acquirements  as  fruits, —  fruits  of 
steady  endeavor  and  slowly  accumulating  experience. 
No  knowledge,  no  achievement,  no  enjoyment,  that 
can  be  given  to  any  soul  to-day,  can  be  compared  to 
the  mental  and  moral  power  that  grows,  with  the 
putting  forth  of  effort,  in  the  soul  itself,  and  in 
which  lie  the  germs  of  all  future  achievements  and 
joys.  And  this  power,  which  is  the  foundation  of 
all  human  virtue  and  progress,  can  only  be  had  at 
the  price  of  toil  and  conflict  with  the  world.  It 
must  be  wrung  out  of  the  rough  and  stony  condi- 
tions of  this  earthly  existence, —  out  of  its  duties 
and  obligations,  its  hardships  and  trials,  its  tempta- 
tions and  griefs.  It  is  found  in  no  Eden  of  dreamy 
rest  :  it  must  be  paid  for  by  resolute  purpose  and 
effort,  just  as  fabled  Hercules  won  Olympus  and  the 
company  of  the  gods  through  toil  and  sacrifice  and 
gigantic  labors. 

And  the  higher  the  virtue,  the  greater  the  price 
that  it  costs.  Jesus  paid  his  very  life-blood  for  the 
virtue  that  is  remembered  to-day  in  hymn,  discourse, 
and  prayer  all  round  the  globe,  and  which  is  still  a 
delicious  spiritual  fragrance  in  the  worship  of  Chris- 


TWI.NTV-l  I\ 

tendom.    The  G  ige  and  moralist,  after  a  life 

journey  of   ]  iil  and   s  icr  1  down  his 

body,  too,  as   the  price  of  an   integrity  which  the 
world    delights    still    to    honor.      Read    Plutarch's 

heroes;  read  the  lives  of  saints  dnd  martyrs, —  many 

a  one,  too,  not   canonized  in  any  calendar  of  the 

Church;    ay,    read    the 

martyrs  and  heroes,  with  whose  glorious  name 

air    has    not    vet    ceased    to  vibrate,  and  wh. 

shall  yet  immortalize  souk-  American  Pli  ' 

what  is  it  in  these  heroi  mmands  our 

admiration    but    just    that    which    they   paid    f<>r   the 

ai  hievementS  which   have  won   their   immortal  t  : 

—  the  endurance,  the  toil,  the  courage,  the  patient 

efforl  and  suffering,  the  precious  bio 

tion,  and  promise  laid  bravely  on  the  altar  of 
sacrifice  to  truth  and  duty5  Such  rare  and  enduring 
virtue  can  only  be  purchased  at  the  costliest  prii 

Bui  even  joys,  to  be  truly  d,  must  be  won 

by  just  desert.  They  must  be  wages  for  service 
rendered, —  the  wages  of  love,  of  sympathy,  of 
healthy  and  helpful  cheer.  It"  there  be  any  posses- 
sion that  would  seem  to  be  exempt  from  this  law  oi 
payment,  it  is  a  gift  from  a  friend.  Vet  have  you 
not  paid  lor  that  by  your  affection  ?  It  is  your  love, 
and  only  that,  which  gives  the  gift  all  its  valu 
your  eyes.  Our  commonest  household  joys,  the 
children's  love  and  presence,  the  daily  domestic 
warmth  and  growing  bond  of  intimacy  and  fellow- 
ship, and  all  the  love,  peace,  mutual  helpfulness, 
happiness,  and  sanctity  we  include  under  that  word, 
home, —  is  there  nothing  to  be  paid  for  these  ?    Shall 


THE    TWO    BDENS  155 

we  expect  such  possessions  and  joys  without  labor, 
without  cost  ?  Ah,  friends,  if  so,  they  will  not  come. 
Generosity,  kindness,  helpfulness,  disinterested  love, 
self-forgetfulness,  self-sacrifice,— only  these,  liberally 
and  cheerfully  paid,  and  with  renewed  payment  every 
day.  can  buy  the  home.  Only  the  recognition  of 
constant  obligations  and  the  faithful  performance  of 
daily  services  can  win  so  pure  and  holy  a  blessing. 
And  so  long  as  there  is  one  atom  of  selfishness  in 
our  characters,  kept  back  as  a  reserved  fund  for  our 
own  special  enjoyment,  there  is  to  that  extent  a 
mortgage  on  our  homes,  which  every  day  subtracts 
something  from  the  income  of  our  domestic  wealth. 
Ay,  the  figure  may  be  extended,  to  cover  the  whole 
breadth  of  the  theme.  As  long  as  t.here  is  any 
capacity  for  a  purely  selfish  enjoyment  in  our  nat- 
ures, which  has  not  yielded  to  the  solvent  of  the 
higher  joy  that  comes  from  helpful  service  to  others 
or  for  serving  truth  and  right,  so  long  there  is  a 
mortgage  on  our  earthly  estate,  which  must  be  paid 
to  the  last  farthing  before  we  arc  able  to  secure  the 
full  happiness  of  heaven. 

But  the  divine  law,  though  thus  stern  in  its  de- 
mands, is  wise  and  merciful  in  its  intent  and  benig- 
nant in  its  operation  ;  and,  if  it  exact  strict  payment 
for  all  the  solid  achievements  and  blessings  of  life,  it 
does  not  do  it  without  offering  amply  to  our  hands 
the  means  for  meeting  all  its  obligations.  If  it  send 
us  out  into  the  world  to  purchase  for  ourselves  the 
world's  wealth  of  virtue  and  joy,  it  places  at  our  feet, 
at  everv  step  of  the  way,  the  precious  metal  of 
opportunity,  from  which  the  coin  is  to  come  that  will 


TWENTY-FIVE    51  KM 

make  the  payment     We  have  but  to  stoop,  and,  by 
invention  of  brain,  work  o!  hands,  and  steady  pur- 

of   heart,  take   the  rough   ore  from    its   bed   and 

mould   it   into  shapes  for  the  commerce  of  truth. 
affei  tion,  and  philanthropy,  and  we  have  the  cum 
that    will   buy  eternal   posses  «  >i;t  of   the   very 

roughness  and  hardness  of  OUT  earthly  lot,  out  of  the 
very  difficulties  and  i  is  that  perplex  ami  some- 

times close   Up  our  path,  from   the  very  tears  of  trial 
and  sweat  of  toil  that  are  wrung  from  us  as  we  jour- 
ney on   over  the  dusty,  burdensome  way,  do  we 
the  virtue  which  is  to  open  the  doors  for  us  of  a  fairer 
garden  than  was  eve  1  behind  Eden1 

none  therefore  despair,  none  drop  weary  by  the 
way.  Let  us  take  up  the  duties  and  burdens  of  life 
with  Eresh  purpose,  sure  that  thus  we  shall  find  its 
solid  realities  and  everlasting  delights.  Its  bitterest 
trials,  its   roughest  and   loneliest  -a  be 

converted    into    the    purest   valor   and    fortitude    and 
saintliness    of    character.      Its    temptations,   sue 
fully  met    and    overcome,  transfer    their   strength    to 
the  soul  that  has  conquered  them.     Even  its  direst 
evil,  sin,  destroyed  and  with   its  corruption  and 
tenness    ploughed    into    the    soil    of   character,  shall 
make   it   productive  of  a  fairer  virtue  ;  and  its  direst 
sorrow,  premature  death,  by  removing   the   material 
and    temporal  veil   from   Kfe,  may  teach    the   lessons 
and  disclose  the  realities  of  life's  eternal  natun 
that  the  thickening  graves  may  become  mounts  of 
vision  from  which  our  opened  eyes  see  farther  into 
heaven.      Thus,  everywhere,  we  win   our   heavenly 
paradise,  not  by  evading  this  world's  obligations,  but 


THE    TWO    EDENS  lS7 

by  conquest  of  the  difficulties,  trials,  and  hardness  of 
earth.  Turning  our  backs  upon  the  childish  delights 
of  sensuous  Eden,  we  journey  on  to  find  the  larger 
satisfactions  of  manhood  and  womanhood,— the  Eden 
of  the  soul —fed  day  by  day  with  the  fruit  of  that 
growing  knowledge  of  mental  and  moral  laws  which 
is  the  sustenance  of  celestial  beings  ;  and  thereby, 
in  very  truth,  we  become  strong  to  "put  forth  our 
hands  and  take  of  the  tree  of  life,  and  eat  and  live 
forever." 

November  20,  1870. 


XII. 
Tlh  >UGH  I  -    AND   D  >NDTJ 

••  \!l   that   we  .ire   Ls   1 
B  our  thou 

The    Roman    emperor,    Marcus    Aureliu  . 

"Such   as  arc   thy   habitual   thoughts  will 

he  chara  thy  mind  ;  l"t>r  the 

by  the  thoughts." 

not  Ear  from    the   same   purport,  runs,  -i. 
thy  heart   with  all  dilig  the 

issues  of  life  to  Luke, 

substantially  the  same  thing  in  the  utt  "A 

good    man    out    of    the    good    treasure  of    his    heart 
bringeth  forth  that  which  is  evil  man 

out  of  1  ire  of  his   heart   bringeth    : 

that  which  is  evil  :   for  of  the  abundance 
his  mouth  speaketh." 

These  different  utterances,  including  that  from  the 
founder  of  Buddhism,  indicate  my  .subject.  1 
point  to  one  of  the  universal  and  fundamental  princi- 
ples of  practical  ethics  and  religion, —  the  principle, 
namely,  that  the  springs  of  character  and  life  are  in 
the  inward  affections  and  dispositions  ;  that  actions 
depend  on  motives,  and  motives  have  their  origin  in 
the  feelings  and    thoughts    of   the    mind ;    that    the 


THOUGHTS    AND    CONDUCT  I  59 

moral  quality  of  a  man's  outward  life  will  be  deter- 
mined therefore  by  the  moral  quality  of  his  prevail- 
ing thoughts  and  sentiments. 

But,  as  soon  as  it  is  said  that  the  moral  quality  of 
conduct  depends  upon  the  thoughts  and  dispositions 
of  the  mind,  a  question  of  responsibility  arises. 
How,  it  is  asked,  can  one  be  held  responsible  for  the 
thoughts  that  come  into  his  mind  or  the  affections 
that  spring  up  in  his  heart?  Are  not  the  roots  of 
them  there  by  nature,  and  do  they  not  originate 
spontaneously?  Do  they  not  come  and  go  indepen- 
dent of  any  control  by  the  human  will?  Since,  in- 
deed,  the   human   will   itself  must   be  determined   to 

IE  by  motives,  and  these  motives  must  h 
their  origin  in  the  sentiments  and  thoughts  of  the 
mind,  would  it  not  be  a  very  patent  instance  of 
>ning  in  a  circle  to  say  that  the  will  may  control 
sentiments  and  thoughts?  Is  it  not  plain 
that  the  will  is  controlled  by  them,  since  it  cannot 
act  without  their  impulse,  rather  than  that  it  has 
any  control  over  them5  The  difficulty  that  SUggi 
these  questions  has  led  to  those  philosophical  theo- 
ries which  deny  man's  free  agency,  and  declare  him 
to  be  the  creature  of  circumstances;  and  to  those 
theological  theories  which  also  deny  his  freedom,  and 
assert  that  he  is  absolutely  dependent  on  a  super- 
natural influence  from  Almighty  Being  to  change 
his  heart  and  make  him  capable  of  goodness  and  sal- 
vation. Now,  I  wish  to  show,  if  I  may,  that  there  is 
no  necessity  of  resorting  to  these  theories, —  that  we 
may  hold  to  man's  freedom  and  to  the  strictest  sense 
of  his  moral  responsibility,  and  yet  maintain  that  the 


TWENTY-1  ivr    SERMONS 

springs  <»f  character  are  in  the  inward  thoughts  and 
affections.     I  wish  to  show  that  these  tl  and 

•inns  are  not  beyond  the  range  oi  human  con- 
trol, but  rather  that  it   is  over  these  inner  sprin. 
conduct  that  the  very  centre  of  moral  responsibility 

But,  first,  very  much  has  to  be  conceded  to  the 
claim  that,  when  we  speak  of  the  thoughts  and  dis- 
tions  of  men's  hearts,  we  must  take  into  account 
those  predispositions  and  those  primal  elements  or 
germs  of  thought  which  are  inherited,  and  over 
which,  as  a  moral  outfit,  to  begin  with,  the  indi- 
vidual p  .  of  course,  has  no  control  ;  and  that 
we  must  also  take  into  account  the  conditions  and 
circumstances  under  which  the  first  years,  the  edu- 
cating years,  of  life  are  spent,  since  these,  undoubt- 
edly, though  not  determined  by  individual  choice, 
are  an  important  agency  in  moulding  the  mind  and 
heart.  I  think  no  metaphysician  or  theologian  will 
venture  to  maintain  to-day  that  all  human  souls  at 
birth  are  precisely  alike  in  respect  to  moral  quality, 
so  that,  if  by  any  possibility  all  could  be  subjected 
alike  to  the  same  educational  discipline  and  experi- 
ences, they  would  develop  precisely  the  same  type  of 
moral  character.  They  are  all,  of  course,  equally 
sinless, —  equally  innocent,  so  far  as  any  moral  re- 
sponsibility of  their  own  is  concerned  ;  but  they  are 
not  all  alike  equally  free  from  the  inherited  taint  of 
moral  evil,  and  do  not  start  in  the  race  of  life  all 
alike  equipped  with  the  same  moral  tendencies. 
While  all  are  alike  guiltless  and  cannot  be  held  re- 
sponsible for  anything  they  inherit,  it  is  yet  true  that 


THOUGHTS    AND    CONDUCT  l6l 

some  are  born  heavily  laden  with  the  woful  burden  of 
ancestral  vices,  which  will  surely  incline  them  to  posi- 
tive moral  transgression  ;  while  others  may  be  pre- 
disposed, by  a  more  fortunate  moral  inheritance,  to 
paths  of  virtue;  and  others,  still,  may  begin  their 
career  with  more  neutral  characteristics.  The  idea 
that  all  human  minds  at  birth  are  like  a  sheet  of 
white  paper,  equally  ready  to  receive  any  impression 
that  may  be  made  upon  them,  equally  pure  in  color 
and  fine  in  texture,  may  be  said  to  be  exploded. 
Physiology  and  psychology  both  deny  it.  Mental 
and  moral  features  are  doubtless  inherited,  as  well  as 
physical.  The  truth  is,  and  the  better  it  will  be  for 
mankind  the  sooner  this  truth  is  known  and  acted 
upon,  the  elements  of  character  begin  before  birth. 
It  is  not  to  be  claimed  that  ideas  are  innate,  nor 
that  any  moral  impulses  and  affections  are  at  birth 
in  a  developed  condition.  But  every  infantile  mind 
is  full  of  the  germs  of  ideas,  dispositions,  impulses ; 
and  these  have  all  inherited  some  moral  bias.  Phys- 
iological science  teaches  that  the  very  texture  of  the 
mind  at  birth,  its  quality  of  fineness  or  coarseness, 
its  measure  of  strength,  edge,  power,  its  innermost 
substance  and  fibre,  its  capacity  for  one  kind  of  ac- 
complishment rather  than  another,  are  largely  deter- 
mined by  ancestral  antecedents.  And,  since  the 
antecedents  are  very  different,  the  stuff  and  texture 
of  different  minds  at  the  outset  are  very  different. 
Instead  of  all  being  like  a  sheet  of  white  paper, 
they  differ  just  as  paper  differs  according  to  the 
material  of  which  it  is  made.  Some  are  pure  white 
and  of   delicate  fibre,  others  are  coarse  and  dingy ; 


[6a  TWEN  1  VI  tVE    5ERMI 

some   arc   flexile,    othei  '  iblc, 

othei  •  I   think, 

that  characters  do  not  all  Btart  alike  ;  il. 
innate  differences  of  mental   and   moral   tendc 
which  must  have  much  to  do  with  determining  the 
after  thou  id  dispo  which  are  to  furnish 

the  motives  of  conduct. 

So,  too,  it  m  litted  that  the  Burroundii 

after  birth,  during  the  < 

dly, — surroundings  for  which  the  individual 

—  will  necessarily  have  great 
influence  in  ,  the  th  and  dispositions 

which  are  to  appear  in  th  I  life. 

It  is  to  speak  in  the  face  of  th 

ive  noth 
with  the  creation  ol  that  all  from 

within.    The  evident  trtain  p 

of   human    life,   that    which    is    within    d  very 

much  upon  the  er  of  that  which  is  without 

The:  ertain  degraded 

dally  in   large  cities,  where  poverl  filth, 

disease,  vice,  and  crime  prevail  to  such  a  d< 
that  you  know  it  would  be  next  to  im 
a  child  who  should  be  born  and  should  grow  up 
there,  without  knowing  any  other  influences,  to 
come  to  useful  and  virtuous  manhood;  or  for  one 
well-born,  if  taken  into  such  scenes  of  life  in  infancy 
and  kept  there,  to  escape  the  contamination.  The 
child  of  civilized  parents,  brought  up  from  early  life 
by  savages,  becomes  degraded  toward  their  condition. 
Yet  the  same  child,  if  restored  in  youthful  manhood 
to  civilization  again,  would    doubtless    incline  more 


THOUGHTS    AND    CONDUCT 

readily  to  the  habits  of  civilized  society  than  would 
the  child  of  a  savage.  The  original  inherited  blood 
would  assert  itself,  proving  that  it  cannot  be 
wholly  neutralized  by  the  power  of  circumstances. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  child  born  in  the  midst  of  those 
rts  of  misery,  vice,  and  crime  which  ought  to  put 
our  civilization  to  shame,  if  rescued  in  early  life  from 
the  degradation  and  placed  in  a  refined  and  virtuous 
home,  will  most  likely  grow  up  to  lead  a  moral  life; 
though  it  may  be  that  the  original  bad  blood,  the 
inherited  predispositions,  will  sometimes  appear, 
that,  under  a  change  of  surroundings,  they  might  re- 
art  themselves  with  tremendous  power.  It  due. 
seem,  however,  that  virtuous  surroundings,  if  per- 
sistently continued,  generally  get  the  better  of  bad 

ent  and  birth,  —  as  witness  the  successful  res 
of  Children's  Aidsocietii  atact  with  living  virt- 

uous character  proves  a  stronger  power  than  the 
evil  which  lurks  in  the  bloo  1  from  dead  ancestors. 
But  let  us  not  think  that  hereby  we  have  a  rig! 
boast  much  over  our  ancestors.  For,  probably,  the 
converse  of  this  proposition  is  also  true, —  that  the 
immediate  influence  of  vicious  character,  living:,  is 
a  stronger  power  during  the  susceptible  years  of 
youth  than  the  inherited  virtue  of  ancestors  who  arc- 
dead.     The  rule  works,  unfortunately,  both  ways. 

It  will  have  to  be  conceded,  then,  that  to  birth 
and  education,  to  inherited  mental  and  moral  ten- 
dencies, and  to  the  outward  conditions  amid  which 
the  growing  years  of  life  are  spent,  the  mind  owes 
in  a  great  degree  the  quality  of  its  thoughts  and 
dispositions.     And   hence,  since  the  predominating 


1 ' '  \ 

nine 
character,   it    must   be  allowed    that    i  r    is 

largely  dependent  on  birth  and  on  circum 

But,  because  of  this  adrai 
left  f  >r  individual  responsibility  and   for  indivi 

Be  trials 

OUt  of  which  our  ch  Li  but   ha 

such  a  rovided  by  nature's  lav. 

given  in  a  condil  »t  of  our  appointing, 

\  that  destroy  all  our  free  in  the  matter? 

we    do  not  or  ight  within  our- 

selves all  the  dispositions  and  thoughts  win 
spring  the  motives  that  determine  conduct,  have 
therefore,    no   a<  induct?     By 

no  means  does  il  from  t:  free- 

dom and  accountability  are  destroyed,  and  that  there 
is  no  room  for  individual  volition  and  culture  in  the 
development  of  character.  On  the  contrary,  from 
what  has  just  been  said  of  the  power  of  circum- 
stances and  of  the  more  direct  appll  if  educa- 
tion over  the  quality  of  the  inner  thoughts  and 
impulses,  we  may  see  just  where  the  responsibility 
.  and  to  what  point  the  aid  of  moral  volition  may 
directed  most  successfully.  We  see  that  it  is 
a  fact  that,  to  change  the  surroundings,  to  put 
virtuous  influences  in  the  place  of  vicious  and  care- 
ful culture  in  the  place  of  neglect,  is  to  change 
the  current  of  the  mind's  thoughts,  to  transform  the 
heart's  impulses,  and  hence  to  develop  good  char- 
acter where  most  inevitably  bad  character  would 
have  appeared,  if  things  had  been  left  to  their  own 
course.     Whether,  then,  every  individual  is  responsi- 


THOUGHTS  AND  CONDUCT  l6$ 

ble  or  not  for  the  thoughts  and  impulses  that  are 
most  active  within  him,  it  may  be  rightly  said  that 
every  generation  of  mature  men  and  women  in 
civilized  society  is  responsible  in  no  small  degree 
for  the  thoughts  and  impulses  that  shall  animate  the 
rising  generation  and  help  to  shape  its  character 
and  conduct.  Nay,  we  may  go  farther  than  this. 
Remembering  how  potent  are  inherited  tendencies, 
we  may  say  that  every  generation  of  mature  men 
and  women  is  to  a  large  extent  responsible  for  the 
moral  quality  of  the  generation  that  is  yet  unborn. 
There  would  be  little  need  of  what  theologians  have 
called  "regeneration,"  or  "being  born  again,"  if 
human  beings  only  came  into  existence  at  first 
through  right  conditions  of  generation  and  natural 
birth. 

Even  then,  if  we  were  to  assume  that  all  the  ele- 
ments of  character  are  included  under  the  two  terms, 
inheritance  and  education,  we  should  not  get  rid  of 
the  doctrine  of  moral  accountability.  The  seat 
of  accountability  might  be  shifted  somewhat,  but  the 
pressure  of  moral  obligation  which  the  word  covers 
would  be  none  the  less  strong.  Men  might  be 
inclined  to  blame  themselves  less  for  what  they 
are,  but  they  would  feel  more  accountable  than 
they  now  do  for  the  condition  of  society  in  general 
and  for  the  generation  coming  after  them.  Why, 
the  very  foundation  of  all  theories  of  education 
is  that  the  natural  dispositions  and  thoughts  of  the 
mind  may  be  changed  and  improved  by  culture  ; 
that  they  may  be  diverted  from  one  channel  into 
another;    that    they    may  be    transferred   from    one 


TV.  . 

nother  ;   that  they  m 
low  pur]  •  i  high  ;   that  minds  ma 

to  act  from  good  motives  rather  than  bad.  and  to 
spend  their  energies  in  noble  pursuits  rather  than 
ignoble.     And  people  of  all 

tinually  acting  upon  thi 
it  be  claimed  that  individuals  have  no  free 
trol    over,   and    no    responsibility  for,   their    own 
thoughts  and   impulses,  no  fact    is  more   patent  than 
that    society   is    constantly  acki 

liability     for     the     thought  in  1 

chai  iming    members,     Parei  I 

it    toward    their    children,    teachei  their 

pupils,    public    speakers    and    write  1     their 

ind  readers.     Nay,  the  very  individuals  who 
may   deny   that    they  ha  oect 

to  their  own  dispositions  and  sentiments,  or  that  I 
have  any  moral  accountability  f 

those  dispositions  and  sentiments,  arc  continually 
trying   to  p  other  people  into  a  cl 

sentiments  and  dispositions.    Though  professing 
they  are  not   free  to  control   their  own   minds,   they 
evidently  believe  in  their  power  I  1   the   m 

of  others.  How  is  this,  then?  Can  it  be  that  we 
have  power  over  the  thoughts  and  lions  of 

our  neighbors,  and  none  over  our  own  ? 

The  answer  to  this  question  must  certainly  be  in 
the  negative  ;  and  it  brings  me  to  another  point,  and 
the  culminating  one,  in  our  theme.  That  same  kind 
of  power  which  lies  in  education,  in  culture,  in  im- 
proved circumstances,  in  the  presentment  of  higher 
ideals  of  action  to  change  the  dispositions  and  ten- 


THOUGHTS  AND  CONDUCT  \6j 

dencies  out  of  which  character  springs,  we  may  exer- 
cise over  ourselves.  Character  depends  upon  our 
habitual  thoughts.  The  quality  of  the  conduct  and 
life  will  follow  the  quality  of  the  prevailing  disposi- 
tions of  the  heart,  but  our  habitual  thoughts  and 
the  prevailing  dispositions  of  the  heart  are  very 
much  what  we  choose  to  make  them.  They  are  not 
forces  rushing  in  upon  us,  and  bearing  us  hither  and 
thither,  without  any  consent  or  action  of  our  own. 
Man  cannot,  it  is  true,  act  without  a  motive.  But 
he  has  power  to  choose  between  different  motives 
or  classes  of  motives.  He  can  put  himself  under 
the  sway  of  one  set  of  motives  rather  than  another. 
He  can  select  the  influences  that  mould  his  actions. 
He  can  change,  to  some  extent,  his  circumstances,  if 
them  unfavorable  to  the  right  development 
of  his  character.  lie  can  do  with  himself,  in  this 
respect,  precisely  what  a  wise  educator  would  do 
with  a  pupil;  that  is,  he  can  remove  the  conditions 
which  excite  the  impulses  and  thoughts  he  would 
repress,  and  put  in  their  place  conditions  that  will 
stimulate  the  thoughts  and  impulses  that  need  to  be 
cultivated. 

For  instance,  a  man  finds  himself  growing  more 
and  more  engrossed  in  business.  That  which  was 
originally  taken  up  simply  as  a  means  of  gaining  a 
livelihood  has  come  to  occupy  all  his  thoughts,  and 
energies.  It  absorbs  him  wholly.  He  lives  in  it  all 
the  hours  of  the  day,  and  dreams  it  over  at  night. 
His  affections  are  in  danger  of  being  dwarfed,  his 
sympathies  dried  up,  his  interest  in  the  great  ques- 
tions that   concern   human  welfare    destroyed.     He 


i 

•Town  to  love  wealth,  and  to  acquire  h 
own  sake,  without  thinking  of  its  i 
when  a  man  finds  bin  je  in  his 

business  life,  what  can  he  do?     He  can  n 

stop  and  take   new  I  H  '"I  will 

take   some   hours  e\ 

the  culture  of   my  mind  and  heart.     I  will 
more  time  to  home  Intercourse.     Hi 

will  read.     Here  i  will  visit     I 

are  !  and  philanl  .  public  and  prii 

that  need  my  interest  and  aid."     Such  a  n 

lutely  made  and  pursued  will  work  the  cha 
I  [e   is   now  a  proof  of  the   mazii 
Aurelius  that  the  mind  will  take  color  and  character 
according  to  the  habitual   thoughts.     His  tho 
have   been   given   habitually  to  business,  until   his 
whole  mind,  heart,  and   soul  are  there;  and   he  is  in 
danger  of  becoming  a  mere   business  machine.      But 
he  may  give  a  different  kind  of  proof  of  the  same 
maxim,  by  habituating  his   thoughts  to  other  inter- 
ests and  pursuits.      I  lis  character  will  follow  his  new 
habits  <A    thought. 

Or  suppose  that  one  is  addicted  to  sensual  indul- 
gence. He,  too,  is  an  illustration  of  the  maxim. 
His  character  follows  the  thoughts  which  he  in- 
dulges. Let  him,  then,  enter  the  conflict  th< 
his  thoughts.  Let  him  put  himself  under  influences 
that  will  lead  his  thoughts  away  from  the  intemper- 
ate demands  of  appetite.  Let  him  avoid  the  pi 
scenes,  companions,  associations  that  excite  these 
appetites,  if  he  cannot  otherwise  keep  his  virtue. 
Let  him  hasten  to  strengthen  the  better  desires  and 


THOUGHTS  AND  CONDUCT  169 

aspirations  of  his  nature  by  re-enforcing  them  with 
the  power  that  comes  from  virtuous  companionship 
and  from  pure  and  cultivated  circles  of  society.  Let 
him  put  himself  under  the  magic  spell  of  a  good 
book,  which  shall  exorcise  the  demon  of  passion. 
Let  him  flee  to  the  purifying  influences  of  nature, 
which  is  often  potent  to  cool  the  hot  blood  of  animal 
desire.  In  some  way,  let  him  break  up  the  train  of 
his  thoughts,  and  turn  them  in  a  pure  direction. 
There  is  where  the  battle  must  be  fought  and  won. 

Or  suppose  that  one  is  given  to  any  form  of  self- 
indulgence, —  to  luxurious  ease,  or  indolence,  or 
undue  love  of  pleasure,  or  excessive  delight  in  social 
display  and  in  the  excitements  of  fashionable  life. 
Here,  again,  it  is  a  question  of  bringing'  the  mind 
under  a  new  set  of  influences,  so  that  those  impulses 
that  lead  to  a  merely  frivolous  and  selfish  life  may 
be  checked,  and  nobler  desires  maybe  aroused  to 
activity  in  their  place  ;  that  is,  it  is  a  question  of 
governing  one's  thoughts,  of  turning  them  from  one 
object  to  another.  Let  such  a  person  seek  the  so- 
ciety of  the  benevolent,  read  the  biographies  of  self- 
sacrificing  and  philanthropic  men  and  women, —  good 
biographies  are  among  the  best  inspirers, —  actively 
participate  in  some  good  work  of  charity,  and  the 
better  current  of  thought  will  surely  begin ;  and,  by 
persistent  and  patient  effort  to  keep  in  this  current, 
nobler  motives  of  conduct  will  in  time  become  ha- 
bitual.    As  the  thoughts,  so  will  the  life  become. 

And,  even  without  this  aid  from  external  influ- 
ences, man  has  the  power  to  break  and  turn  the 
train  of  his  thoughts,  and  so  to  call  into  exercise  one 


"her. 

irer  way  to  turn  I 
of  thought  is  to  re-enforce  tl 
iter  influent 
tive  I  i  I.-  by  internal  power  to 

•   it  by  r  1>\ 

rotary  me  I 
that.    And  he  has  the  h  band  the 

who  can  do  I  who  kee] 

iwn  mental  housi 

.  I  think,  something  <>f  thi 

■ 

lerc 
ling  of   l  i  the 

hah:'  I    their  v. 

duct  ;  and  th  he  manly 

re  able  ' 

Up   in   tl 

come  what  may  of  evil  m  the  influ- 

arround  me  <>r  from  ti. 
lurk  in  my  brain,  my  will  shall  only  by 

the  inner  forces  of  reason  and  i  and  that 

.    .    . 

so  much  the  creature 

tor.     And  to  this  type  of  ;>ire, — a 

type  of  character  wherein,  though  the  texture  of  the 
outward  life  will  necessarily  conform  to  the  qu 
of  the  inner  thoughl  i  will  be 

vants  of    the  power  of  moral  choice,  which  stands 
supreme  over  all. 

April  23,  187I. 


XIII. 

EASTER    TRUTHS   AND   TRADITIONS. 

"Through  the  tender  mercy  of  our  God,  whereby  the  dayspring 
from  on  high  hath  visited  as,  to  give  light  to  them  that  sit  in  darkness 
and  in  the  shadow  of  death,  to  guide  our  I  way  of  peace." 

—  I  ■ 

[n  this  affectionate  and  poetic  phrase  doessumc 
early  Christian  believer  record  his  impressions  of  the 
mission  of  Jesus.  It  seemed  to  him  life  the  dawn 
of  a  new  day,  like  the  glory  of  a  sunrise,  like  the 
shining  of  a  light  in  the  midst  of  darkness,  like  the 
springing  of  life  out  of  the  shadow  of  death  and 
the  mould   i  rave     '  appreciate   the 

tender  gratitude  of  his  words,  the  fine  ideality  of 
his  thought,  though  not  interpreting  him  literally. 
We  must  allow  to  the  element  of  imagination  large 
room  and  influence  in  the  shaping  of  religious  beliefs 
and  movements.  And  this  sentence,  as  a  prophetic 
description  of  the  mission  of  Jesus,—  represented  as 
prophetic,  though  written  after  the  event, —  seems 
especially  consonant  with  the  sentiment  of  Easter 
which  has  always  been  one  of  the  poetic  and 
dramatic  days  in  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church. 
To  trace,  indeed,  the  beliefs  and  practices  that  per- 
tain to  this  day  through  the  eighteen  centuries  of 
Christian  history  would  almost  give  us  the  history 


[72  TWENTY-]  r. 

of  Christian  [propose,  in  thi 

to  note  Borne  of  the  points  in  the  1. 
tions   of  the  day,   which   may  I  i  bring  into 

•    the   truths  an  I  trad  llity 

and  the  poetry,  that   have  woven   then 
this  Chi;   •  Jtival,  know:.  We 

shall  that   not   in  the  li: 

inter         •    'i  of  the  '  ' 

be  found,  but  that  behind  il 

arc  ideal  sources  of  belief  and  sentiment  that  are 
luminous  with  satisfying  ev;  t  truth. 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  look  at   the  primary  be 
m    whi   h    the    eelebrat:  began, 

course,  to  th  arch 

Kilter    commemorates    one   evei 

the   ;  tion    of   J.sus    from   the  tomb.      It  was, 

we  hi  ty  >  iv  with  truth,   from   th  belief   in 

the    resurrection  Christianity  Si  irted 

That  was  the 
doctrine,  more  than   any  other,  that  was  the  burden 
of    apostolic    prea<  hing.       It    is   extremely  doubtful, 
indeed,    whether    the    disciples    would    have    rallied 
from  the  bitti  pointment  and  grief  into  which 

they  had  been  plunged  by  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus, — 
whether  they  would  have  found  any  standing-ground 
for  the  proclaiming  of  the  new  faith, —  had  not  this 
belief  in  the  resurrection  of  their  master  somehow 
come  to  them.  But,  however  this  may  be,  it  is 
certain  —  the  New  Testament  and  tradition  both  put 
the  fact  beyond  question  —  that  it  was  their  belief 
in  his  resurrection  that  bridged  the  gulf  between 
the  actual  life  of  Jesus  and  historical  Christianity. 


EASTER  TRUTH?  AND  TRADITIONS        1 73 

t,  if  we  were  asked  to  analyze  that  belief  and 
state  its  cause,  a  rational,  historical  criticism  would 
have    to   take    issue,    I    think,    with    the    popularly 
accepted  answer  of  Christendom.     A  thorough    ex- 
amination of  the  evidence,  noting  its  discrepancies, 
noting,  too,  the  way  in  which  the  Xew  Testament 
records  were  formed, —  their  undoubtedly  late  origin 
and  gradual  growth  after  the  events  to  which  they 
refer    took   place, —  such  an  examination,   I  believe, 
will    most    certainly  fail    to  establish    the  fact   of  a 
physical  resurrection  of  Jesus,  or  even  that  the  first 
sties    uniformly    and    definitely    believed    in    the 
resurrection  of  his  natural  body.      Paul's  testimony, 
certainly  the  oldest  and    the  most  undisputed    that 
we  have  to  the  fact  that  some  kind  of  resurrection 
was  believed   in,  favors  the  idea  of  a  spiritual  resur- 
rection rather  than  that  of  the  rising  of  the  physical 
body.     For  he  argues  from  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
to  the  resurrection  of  all  mankind,  and  yet  distinctly 
disclaims   believing,  with   reference  to  mankind    in 
general,  that  the  same  body  is  raised  that  is  buried. 
"Thou  sowest  not,"  he  says,  "that  body  which  shall 
be;  ...  but  Cod  giveth  it  a  body"— -that  is,  giveth 
to  the  soul  a  new  body  —  "as  it  hath  pleased  him." 
The  probability  is  that  the  more   practical  and  mat- 
ter-of-fact of  the  primitive  Christians  believed  in  the 
material    resurrection  of  Jesus,  for   they  could    not 
otherwise  grasp  the  fact  of  his  resurrection  at  all, 
or  of  his  continued  existence  ;  but   that  the  more 
speculative  and  mystical  among  them,  or  the  more 
intelligent  we  may  say,  those  like  Paul  and  Apollos 
(if  he  be  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews), 


believed  simply  in  his  spiritual  resurrection,  which 
had   become  manife  ml,  in 

The    testimony  itself    that    is   presented   in   the  I 

IWS  that  those  who  gave  it  had  no  clear 
comprehension  of  the  phenomena,  The  testimony 
is  conclu  to  the  I  in  the 

resurrection   of  J  lidering  the  eircum 

stances  of  the  case  and  of  the  age  in  general,  such 

a  belief  may  easily  h  in  without  tl  I  an 

J  bodily  resurrection.     To  my  mind,  lookin 
the  problem  from  every  point  of  view,  it  seems  infi- 

isier  to  account   for  the  belief  in   the  re 
a   natural 
a  stupendous  miracl       3  would   he  tin-  iring 

of  a  man  who  had  been  actually  dead  from  tl 
And  since  the  ] 

iblish   so   momentous    an   event,  a  rational 
ment  will  withhold  as  it.  even  if  all  the  natural 

causes  of   the    belief    in    it  cannot    now 
torily  traced.      In  short,  the  aent  St(  r 

Jesus'  resurrection  must  be  remanded  to  the  realm 
of  Christian  mythology. 

But  because  we  may  not  believe  in  the  phya 
resurrection  of  J  we  read  as  uncertain 

tradition  and  poetical  legend  the  accounts  of  the 
rolling  away  of  the  stone  from  the  door  of  the 
sepulchre  and  of  the  coming  forth  of  Jesus  there- 
from, and  of  the  appearance  of  tl.  9  and  of 
the  resurrection  interviews  with  the  devoted  women 
and  the  disciples,  do  we  for  this  reason  say  that 
there  is  nothing  to  commemorate,  that  nothing  hap- 
pened ?     By  no  means.     Such  a  movement   as  his- 


EASTER   TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  175 

torical  Christianity  did  not  begin  in  a  mistake,  in  a 
delusion,  in  a  fancy  of  two  or  three  women  who  may 
have  been  beside  themselves  with  disappointment 
and  grief.  Much  less  did  it  begin  with  a  deliberate 
imposture.  It  began  in  a  great  fact,  but  the  fact 
was  mental  rather  than  material ;  and  the  material 
form  which  it  assumed  in  the  legend  of  the  physical 
resurrection  was  only  the  dress  in  which  the  fact 
clothed  itself  according  to  the  fashion  of  the  times, 
—  the  medium  by  which  it  became  current  with  the 
common  understanding  of  the  age.  And  this  fact 
the  mental  and  spiritual  transformation,  by 
which  the  disciples  of  Jesus  passed  from  the  crush- 
ing sorrow  and  despair  into  which  his  crucifixion 
had  suddenly  thrown  them,  to  the  faith,  hope,  and 
courage  which  enabled  them  to  take  up  the  cause 
which  at  tned  to  have  been  buried   irrecover- 

ably in  his  grave,  and  to  carry  it  forward  to  triumph. 
They  had  fled  from  his  cross;  but,  somehow,  they 
had  become  strong  now  to  face  their  own  unflinch- 
ingly. They  had  slept  when  he  met  his  agony  in 
Gethsemane,  apparently  not  believing  it  possible 
that  he,  their  Messiah,  could  come  to  the  ignominy 
of  the  crucifixion.  Now,  they  were  fully  awake  ;  and 
no  burden  was  too  heavy  for  them  to  take  up.  The 
cross  itself,  that  had  been  their  shame,  had  become 
their  glory.  So  long  as  Jesus  was  with  them,  they 
had  been  dull  of  understanding  and  had  miscon- 
ceived continually  what  he  had  taught  them  of  that 
heavenly  kingdom  which  he  had  hoped  to  inaugu- 
rate. Now,  in  the  sharpness  of  their  pain  at  his 
departure,  their  vision  seems  to  have  been  opened, 


so  that  t  truly  th 

work  • 

was   with   them,  the  lildren.  him 

•mm  ind  or  •• 
induct     Now,  they  wer< 

strong   men    and    brave  women,  with  opinions    and 
Of    their  own.  it   in    their  own    po« 

and   prepared   to  act  tor  the  they 

the  tloek.  humbly  following,  but  shrinking  and 
:.      Now,  they    were    the    shepherds 
t  flocks,  and  bol  L     Here,  in  this  mental 

mation,  was  the 
tion.     It  would  have  been  of  litl  lent 

1  isus  had  actually  I  from  the  grai 

ming  so   charily  and   vanishing  again    SO 
But   it  was  of  the   utmost    moment   that   the 
iples  should  ri-  their  despondc 

grief    to   the    faith   and   courage   that   comprehended 
and  mastered  the  crisis. 

•  someone  will  argue  that  the  physical  resur- 

on  of  Jesus  was  needed  to  produce  this  trans- 
formation and  was  really  the  cause  of  it.  But  have 
you  not  witnessed  similar  experience  in  the  common 
history  of  human  careers?  Why  resort  to  an  out- 
ward miracle,  to  an  abnormal  phenomenon  of  flesh 
and  blood,  to  explain  a  spiritual  process  the  elements 
of  which  are  the  common  property  of  humanity? 
What  a  disappointment  and  dismay  fell  upon  these 
Northern  States  after  the  first  inglorious  defeat  at 
Bull  Run!  Yet  in  that  defeat  was  the  nation's 
ultimate  victory.  Out  of  it  came  the  first  substan- 
tial realization  of  the  work  to  be  done,  as  well  as  the 


EASTER    TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  \JJ 

heroic  determination  to  do  it.  Had  our  army  there 
triumphed  and  advanced  to  Richmond,  and  there,  as 
was  then  hoped,  put  a  quick  end  to  the  rebellion, 
slaves  would  have  been  still  working  under  the  lash 
in  the  South.  Those  first  defeats  of  the  war,  bitter 
as  they  were  to  bear,  were  the  cross  by  which  the 
nation  rose  to  the  -lory  of  the  proclamation  of  free- 
dom and  of  equal  rights.  You  may  see  the  same 
fact  all  through  history.  '•  The  blood  of  the  martyrs 
is  the  seed  of  the  Church."  a  may  see  it  also  in 

private  and  personal  experience.     Who  has  not  ob- 
served  character   developing    unexpected    strength 
and  solidity,  when  outward    props   hive  been   taken 
away,  and    it  has   been  thrown  back    upon   its  own 
centre?     Women,  who  have  seemed  weak,  clinging, 
invalid,  seldom    thinking  or    doing    for    themselves, 
becoming   clear-minded,  self-reliant,  and    roused    to 
heroic  action,  when  some  great  exigency  of  bereave- 
ment has  come  upon  them  ?      Young  men  and  young 
women,  who  have  only  been  wont  to  lean  on  others, 
suddenly  springing    to    maturity,   and    developing    a 
power  they  were   never  suspected   to  possess,  under 
the  pressure  of  some  severe  external  condition  that 
forced    responsibility  upon    them?     Soldiers   in 
the  crisis  of  battle,  nerved   up  to  almost  more   than 
mortal  strength,  as    the  contest  goes    hard    against 
them    and    they  feel    the  cause   slipping  from  their 
grasp,  which  one  more  mighty  effort  may  redeem  ? 
In  all  these  and  similar  cases,  the  emergency  seems 
naturally  to  develop  the  power  that  is  required    to 
meet  it.     The  very  need  touches  the  springs  of  sup- 
ply.    And  in  harmony  with  this  general   law  came 


T\\  1  \  1  \  -1  II 

the  transformation  of  mental  condition  by  which  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  passe  I  out  oi   the 
sorrow  and  despondency  I  ittitude  of  resolution 

and  faith. 

Moreover,  to  suppose  that  the  miracle  of  an 
ward   resurrection  was  n  in  them 

this  is  to  di  the  influence  of  Je 

hings  upon  them     Can  we  suppose  that 

the  gre   I  I    his  ch  the  heroism   of    his 

■!-,  had    had    so    litl  :r   upon    those   with 

whom   he    had    daily  lived,   that. 

gone,  they  would   1  tten  and  forsaken  the 

<mum-   to   which   he   had  a,   unless    be 

ed  to  them  from  the  tomb?     Is  it  not  a  more 

natural    thought    that    the  memory  of   what   he   had 
been   to  them,  the  iv  n  of  his  words,  and  the 

subtle  influence  of  character  that  had  from 

him   to  them,  would   he  a   strong   incentive  after  lie 
had    left    them    not    to    let    his  fail 'in    their 

hands?    To  suppose  an  apparition  of  his  body  after 
death  to  be  necessary  to  convince  them  <>i  his  M' 
anic   mission   is  to  suj  '   wonder 

was  of  more  moment  than  the   truths  he  had  Utl 
and   the  life  he  had  lived  ;  that  a  bodily  manif 
tion  was  a  fact  of  more  weight  than  spiritual  inspira- 
tion and  moral  fidelity. 

Nor,  again,  was  such  an  apparition  required  to 
enable  them  to  believe  in  a  future  life.  They 
believed  that  already  ;  and  they  believed  in  the 
general  resurrection  of  the  dead,  though  whether 
material  or  spiritual  may  be  a  question.  The  Jews 
generally,    before   the    time    of   Jesus,  as    the   New 


EASTER    TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  I  ~  i 

Testament  itself  bears  witness,  believed  in  these 
two  doctrines.  They  had  been  familiar  with  these 
doctrines  since  the  captivity  in  Babylon.  Only  the 
Sadducees,  a  cultivated  but  comparatively  small  sect, 
denied  them.  If  we  do  not  find  them  in  the  canon 
of  the  Old  Testament,  we  find  them  explicitly 
stated  in  the  Apocrypha.  The  resurrection  of  Jesus, 
therefore,  was  not  needed  to  convince  the  disciples 
of  his  own  or  their  continued  existence  after  death. 
Yet  the  inestimable  value  of  his  life,  the  greatnr-^ 
of  his  virtue,  the  prophetic  character  that  he  pos- 
sessed, the  Messianic  character  that  was  attributed 
to  him, —  all  this  intensified  and  vitalized  with  new 
power  the  old  belief  in  a  life  beyond  the  present. 
Such  a  man  as  this,  they  felt,  could  not  die.  Had 
it  not  been  written,  "  Righteousness  is  immortal  "  ; 
"The  souls  of  the  righteous  are  in  the  hand  of  I 
and  there  shall  no  torment  touch  them  ;  and,  though 
they  be  punished  in  the  sight  of  men,  yet  is  their 
hope  full  <>f  immortality"?  How,  then,  should  not 
such  a  righteous  person  as  this  survive,  even  though 
the  cross  had  done  its  cruel  work  of  destruction 
upon  his  body  and  the  grave  had  claimed  it  for 
corruption?  Thus  must  their  grief  have  found 
refuge  from  its  own  despair.  And  since,  because  of 
his  prophetic  wisdom  and  nobility  of  character,  they 
had  accepted  Jesus  as  Messiah,  and  since  the  Mes- 
siah they  still  believed  him  to  be,  this  was  an  addi- 
tional reason  why  they  could  not  believe  him  to  have 
utterly  vanished  with  his  body.  His  promises  —  so 
their  bereaved  but  still  hoping  hearts  assured  them 
—  must   yet   be  fulfilled,  his  work   must  go  on,  his 


TWENTY-FH 

lom  must  be  id  he  hin 

away,  would  doubtless,  in  due  time,  n 

itre.      It  was   natural   that   tl 
thus  .     i    out    of   BU(  h    tl 

•  1  very  likely  with  some 
subjective  vision   on    the 
of    the   prim; 

to  me,  the 

•i  in  the  and  the 

erning  it,  tl  and 

finally  i 
What,  then,  is  it  th 
tin-  rising  of  the  i  •  but  the  ri 

ol"  his  crucified  truth  ;    not   his  j 
but  his  spiritu.il  tion  ;    not  tl 

to  the  '  t  the  s  iperiorit 

a  no  tl   to  all  tormei  I 

bonds  of  the  grave.     It  commemorates  the  triumph 

•r    erro; .  r    wron 

light  over  darkness,  ,,f  life  springing  Up  out  of  the 
corruption  of  death,  and  converting  death  itself  into 
elements  of  ice  and  beai 

That    the    early    Christians     themselves    had    no 
very  definite  d  the    phenomena    of    an 

outward  resurrection   is   manifest  from   •  |    that 

the  churches  very  early  f  '1  apart  concerning  the 
time  when  they  would  celebrate  it.  The  Eastern 
churches,  following,  as  they  claimed,  a  tradition 
from  John,  the  disciple,  adopted  the  fourteenth  of 
the  month  called  Nisan  as  the  day  of  the  crucifixion, 
and  the  third  day  after  that  as  resurrection  day,  on 
whatever  clay  of  the  week  it  might  come.     But  the 


EASTER    IKL'TILS    AND    TRADITIONS  l8l 

churches   in    Europe,    following,   as    they   claimed, 

a  tradition  from  Paul,  adopted  for  the  celebration 
the  Sunday  nearest  to  the  full  moon  of  that  month, 
without  regard  to  the  day  of  the  crucifixion  or  the 
alleged  day  of  resurrection.  This  dispute  lasted 
for  two  centuries,  at  times  becoming  very  serious 
and  bitter  ;  and  it  was  not  terminated  until  the  time 
of  Constantine  and  the  Council  of  Nice,  in  the  year 
325,  when  the  principle  of  the  rule  of  the  West- 
ern churches  rattier  than  the  Eastern  prevailed, 
and  Easter  was  made  a  movable  festival.  It  seems 
likely  that  the  simultaneous  occurrence  of  some 
pagan  festival  in  Southern  Europe,  which  could  be 
trail -formed  into  the  Christian,  helped  to  determine 
the  day,  as  well  as  to  impart  some  marked  features 
to  the  celebration  after  this  time.  Popular  sports 
and  curious  superstitions  of  various  sorts  came 
to  Ik-  mingled  with  the  religious  solemnities  of 
the  day.  And  these,  probably  of  pagan  ancestry, 
are  still  extant  in  countries  where  Catholicism  has 
had  most  power.  There  arose  very  early,  too,  a 
difference  of  opinion  on  the  very  question  we  hive 
been  considering, —  whether  Jesus  rose  or  not  in  the 
same  physical  body  that  had  been  buried.  Some  of 
the  most  learned  of  the  Christian  Fathers  contended 
that  he  rose  only  in  a  spiritual  body.  Ori^en,  Chry- 
sostom,  and  Clement  held  this  opinion.  And  this 
question  never  was  settled  by  any  decree  of  a 
council,  so  that  it  is  maintained  by  some  scholars 
that  the  orthodox  theory  in  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  to-day  is  that  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  was 
in  his  spiritual  body,  and  not  in  the  material. 


1     • 

It    we   I  the   his; 

through  the  later  centurii  hall 

find  it  taking  sha]  an  1 

characteristics.     Amen-  the  Roma] 
espe<  [ally  in  Rome,  it  i 

1  with  vast  pomp  and  ceremoi 
Chri  nt  on  tl  ng  the  bom- 

Where 
Puritanism  and  Quakerism  I 
memoration  has  I  minimui 

i  rnitioil    or   has   been   entire'  . 

to  th(  the  hilarity  and 

play  which   had  I    d  with 

in  England  seemed  -1  to  the  n.u:\c  of  n 

ion,  that  could  i  bing  the 

festival  itself.     1 

condemnation  of  th< 

:    nearly   obliteral  uit   chun 

n^w  vie  writ!  I 

celebral  ii 

But  one  of  the  most  n 
with  the  history  of  1  I 

1   when    CI  line    int      Gei 

or  received  the  tonic 

nations.      It  found  there  d  in  the  i 

of  ancient  date,  in   honor  of  .   or  (  tet<  ra,  the 

goddess  of  spring.     Thisfestival    ommemorated  the 
return  of  the  sun  to  Northern   clime-  after   its  long 
•  with  the  genii  of  winter, —  with  loud, 

storm,  and  death.  It  commemorated  the  revival  of 
the  forces  of  nature,  the  fresh  hopes  that  came  to 
man  and  beast,  the  promise  of  a  new  >e<-  i-time  and 


EASTER   TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  183 

harvest.  It  was  a  thank-offering  to  the  sun  as  the 
annual  creator  of  the  sustenance  and  beauty  which 
the  earth,  at  the  touch  of  his  fertilizing  rays,  pro- 
duced for  man.  It  was  a  festival,  therefore,  of  grate- 
ful reverence  and  piety.  It  was  religious,  but  it  was 
also  a  day  of  popular  joyousness.  This  festival  of 
Teutonic  paganism  Christianity  did  not  abolish,  but 
adopted  and  transformed,  in  its  primary  feature,  into 
a  celebration  in  honor  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus. 
The  two  celebrations,  in  fact,  came  together  and 
graduallv  adapted  themselves  to  each  other,  until 
they  coalesced  finally  into  one,  which  retained  some 
of    the    features    of    both.      The    very   name    of    the 

in  festival  was  retained, —  Easter,  from  Eo 
—  as  were  some  of  its  popular  out-door  .spoils  and 
traditions.  The  flowers  —  emblem  of  nature  ivvi\  ing 
from  her  wintei  of  death — which  have  become  such  a 
feature  of  the  day  in  modern  Christian  churches,  also 
the  eggs,  traditionally  associated  with  the  day,  and 
Symbol  of  life,  are  a  reminiscence  ol  the  old  Teutonic 
celebration  rather  than  of  that  which  began  in  Judea. 
And   vet    they    fit   harmoniously   to   both.      The    two 

brations,  before  they  coalesced,  had  so  much  in 
common  that  the  conjunction  was  natural  and  e 
B  th  were  on  a  day  dedicated  to  the  worship  of  the 
sun.  The  Christian  festival  had  already  imbibed 
some  features  of  hilarity  from  paganism  in  Southern 
Europe.  The  fact,  too,  that  Jesus  was  called  the 
•'Sun  of  Righteousness,"  "the  Light,"  "the  Day- 
spring  from  on  high,"  that  his  religion  came  from 
the  East,  the  home  of  the  sun  and  the  land  of  the 
sunrise,  made   the   transition    not  difficult   from  the 


TU  l 

M  to  the  Christian  interpretation  ol    the   I 
v:il.      And,  for  one.  I  like  to  think  that  there  il  this 

atiment    and   tradition  winch   ha 
int..  the  celebration  of  tins  day,— that  in  it  heathen 
as  well   as   Christian   memories   mingle      It   is  the 
same  with   the   Christm  '  '  think 

that  the  roots  of   be  1   practice-  in   modern 

Christendom    run   down  '•   not 

stopping  eighteen  centuries  back,  but  I 
the  a  >'  through  tl 

mon  soil  of  our  humanity.      I   love   to  think   that,  in 
this    Easter  festival,  kept  in   Europe  and   Ami 

v,   there    mingle    traditions,   though    it 

unconscious'.;.  time   when    our    hardy 

fathers,   independent   bul  at.   gathered,  not   in 

temples  made  with  hands,  but  in  the  primeval  w 
and  sacred  -roves  built  by  nature's  architect,  and 
gave  utterance  to  their  grateful  praise  to  the  Power 
that  every  year  re-creates  the  earth,  clothes  it  with 
beauty,  and  fills  it  with  manifold  forms  of  life  and 
joy.  Say  you  that  they  worshipped  the  sun' 
Rather  was   it   the   Power  within  or   behind   the  sun, 

the  sustaining  providence  of  the  universe,  brin 
seed-time  and    harvest   without   fail   in  their  season, 
and  guiding  this  rb  of  light,  heat,  and  li: 

daily  and  yearly  beneficence  to  man.  There  was 
trust  and  gratitude  in  their  worship,— grateful  reli- 
ance upon  the  order  of  nature.  Though  not  in 
Jerusalem  nor  on  Mount  Gerizim,  they  yet,  in  these 
stately  temples  of  nature,  which  Christianity  has  but 
faintly  copied  in  its  Gothic  cathedrals,  worshipped 
in  spirit  and  in  truth.     To  find  these  evidences  of 


EASTER    TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  I 85 

relationship  among  religions,  to  trace  Christian  cer- 
emonies and  ideas  beyond  Christian  and  Hebrew 
lines  into  the  vast  common  of  natural  religion,  so  far 
from  disturbing  my  faith,  gives  me  a  new  and  beau- 
tiful testimony  to  the  solidarity  of  the  human  race 
and  to  the  actual  natural  brotherhood  of  mankind. 
Instead  of  undermining  my  faith,  these  discoveries 
give  it  a  broader  and  deeper  foundation.  Instead  of 
a  past  of  eighteen  or  nineteen  hundred  years  merely, 
running  up  to  a  written  record  whose  authenticity 
may  be  assailed,  ray  feet  stand  upon  a  past  that  is 
coeval  and  coterminous  with  the  entire  history  of 
man  on  this  planet.  I  see  the  sects  with  hands 
raised  every  one  against  its  neighbor, —  the  religions 
at  war  with  the  religions.  I  see  that,  in  the  grow- 
in.;  light  of  reason,  many  of  the  doctrines  and  cere- 
monies that  divide  the  warring  zealots  are  vanishing 
away  as  superstitions.  But,  deep  below  all  their 
differences,  amid  all  vanishing  of  ancient  doctrines, 
I  trace  the  roots  of  the  great  beliefs,  hopes,  trusts, 
aspirations  of  mankind,  down  to  certain  primary 
impulses  inherent  in  the  very  constitution  of  human 
nature,  and  which  are  what  they  are  because  they 
are  vital  with  the  creative  energy  which  at  that 
point  passed  over  from  the  Supreme  Source  of  all 
things  to  finite  consciousness.  And  there  they  are 
sale.  So  long  as  human  nature  endures  and  keeps 
its  identity,  nothing  can  there  disturb. them.  They 
are  beyond  the  region  of  doubt ;  they  are  above  the 
reach  of  literary  and  historical  criticism.  They  may 
be  reasoned  about,  but  not  reasoned  away ;  for  they 
are  involved  in  the  very  nature  of  the  reasoning  in- 


I  U  I.N  1  VI-  1  \  I      -1  Rill 

e  itself.     Their  I 
change,  l>ut  in  substance  they  abide. 
And,  among   these  central   trusl 
religion,  it  is  not  difficult  to  '-hat  the 

Easter  fest  '" 

in's  inextinguishable  hope  and  faith  that  lij 
M/r, , .  \ — that  the  vital  and  i 

i-  in  nature  is  alwa) 
of  decay  and  dissolution,  and.  after 

•turns  in  triumph  to  the  field  ;  that  there  is 

that  in  the  life  of  man  which  is  more  than  the 
.    which   dise  'id  deal 

more  than  the  dust  which  the 
hold.     1'i.   *e  two  1  »rms  of  humanitj 
the  abiding  power  of   Life,  the 
clothed    in   symbol    and   poetry,   addressed   to   the 
popular  imagination. 

Lr  'h, —  that  is 

the  day1  •<-*>'  new 

in.  Science,  even,  is  tea  bin  ,  now  that  death  is 
only  a  phase,  e,  in  the  continuing  and  abiding 

proo  that  there  is  never  any  absolute 

n  of  power,  of  vitality,  but  only  change  in  its 
direction  and  form.  But,  before  science  came,  man 
was  learning  tin  tern  school  i 

rience,  and  through  the  deep  instincts  of  his  heart, 
—  feeling  after  the  truth,  if  haply  he  might  find  it. 
He  saw  nature  every  year  threatened  with  destruc- 
tion. All  the  outward  signs  of  life  vanished  from 
her.  The  winds  and  storms  beat  upon  her,  and  her 
beauty  fell.  Farther  and  farther  each  day  the 
warmth  of    the    sun  departed,  and   the  world   grew 


EASTER    TRUTHS    AND    TRADITIONS  187 

cold,  drear,  and  desolate.  Nature  seemed  dead. 
Snow  and  ice  entombed  her.  And  man  must  perish 
with  her.  But  anon  he  saw  the  sun  return.  The 
old  vital  warmth  was  still  there.  Nature  was  not 
dead  :  she  was  only  sleeping.  Day  by  day,  her  burial 
shroud  was  loosened  The  icy  barrier  was  removed 
from  her  sepulchre.  And  soon  she  reappeared  in  all 
her  old  beauty,  promise,  and  power.  The  Life-power 
in  nature  stood  revealed  before  his  eyes  Stronger  than 
the  Death-power.  Man  saw,  too,  his  heart's  affec- 
tions threatened  with  destruction.  One  by  one,  his 
friends  and  companions  dropped  from  his  side,  and 
he  saw  them  no  more.  His  house  became  to  him 
more  cold,  drear,  and  desolate  than  the  winter  of 
nature.  But  by  and  by  there  awoke  in  his  heart  the 
Ight  that,  if  the  life  of  outward  material  nature 
so  dear  to  the  Creative  Power  that  it  was  thus 
carefully  preserved  through  every  semblance  of  death, 
much  more  must  it  be  the  purpose  of  the  Creative 
Tower  to  preserve  this  inward  human  nature,  this  life 
of  heart  and  mind,  wherein  man  is  superior  to  nature 
and  through  which  come  his  chiefest  joys.  And  so 
came  the  great  hope  and  belief  in  immortality, —  the 
faith  that  to  the  soul's  vitality  there  could  be  no 
death.  It  is  the  most  natural  and  axiomatic  of  all 
thoughts  that,  since  Lift-  is.  Life  must  be  an  object 
to  be  cherished  and  preserved  by  the  Creative  Power 
whence  it  came.  Life,  not  death,  must  be  the  pur- 
pose and  aim  of  the  all-pervading  energy. 

Hut  not  material  life  alone,  nor  chiefly.  Man  has 
learned  that  great  lesson,  too,  and  learned  it  through 
the  severe  discipline  of  experience.     It  is  not   his 


[88  TWEHTY-Pn 

own  material  life  that   i  to  him.      He 

will  surrender  his  body  to  the  powei 
rather  than  abandon  a  conviction  oi  his  mind.     He 
will  face  fire  and  sword  rather  than  forswear  a  moral 
principle.      He  will   I  LSt   his   own  body  into  the  jaws 
of  death   for  the  sake   of   SJ  m   of  his   heart. 

There   are   grades  of  life,  anil   it    is   clearly  the   prov- 
idential intention  that  the  lower  grades  should  - 
the    higher.      When    man    shall    learn    to   CO-operate 

perfectly  with  this  intention,  then  physical  death  will 

come  to  him  only  as  condition  of  resurrection  to 
some  higher  form  of  life.  Then  he  will  live  already 
in  the  domain  of  rational  thought,  in  the  wholesome 
atmosphere  >d  con  in  the  puril 

his  heart's  1  itions;  and  so  with  him  the  cor- 

ruptible will  have  already  put  on  inCOJTUption,  and 
the  mortal  will  have  put  on  immortality. 

March  31,  1S72. 


XIV.  . 
OPTIMISM. 

"  We  know  that  all  things  work  together  for  good  to  them  that 
love  God."— Rom.  riii.,  2S. 

I  suppose  that  all  people  who  have  any  thoughts 
about  the  matter  want  to  believe  in  the  proposition 
announced  in  this  sentence  of  Paul.  Perhaps  most 
people  have  moments  and  seasons  when  they  do 
believe    it.      And    yet,    I    SU]  ,    to    most    people 

there  come  frequent  times  when  they  are  compelled 

Loubt  it, — times,  at  least,  when  "things"  seem 
so  adverse  to  good,  when  the  apparently  untoward 
and  evil  circumstances  that  beset  human  life  press 
so  heavily,  that  it  does  not  look  SO  certain  that  they 

irk  together  for  good."  Even  it  faith  come  to 
the  rescue  of  the  bewildered  understanding  with  the 
assurance  that,  since  infinite  Goodness  reigns,  it 
must  be  so,  nevertheless  the  question  arises,  and 
keeps  urging  itself,  how  it  can  be  so.  Though  faith 
may  be  able  to  say,  We  believe  that  somehow,  how- 
ever dark  and  difficult  the  problem  may  look,  all  the 
ills  of  life  are  wrought  over  into  good,  yet  if  reason 
do  not  see  at  all  into  the  process,  if  the  logical 
understanding  get  no  clew  toward  a  satisfying  solu- 
tion, it  is  hard  to  keep  back  intruding  questions  and 
to  hold  that  height  of  certainty  wherein  the  mind 


with  unshaken  confiden 

"We    know    that     all     t  hii  for 

we  know  it  ?    1  •  c  it 

must  that  ti 

oi  the  univei 
the  question  •  than  t  i  it.     TI. 

ffled  mind  when,  ha\  I  i  the 

limits  of  its  know 
for    '  la  the  w 

and  d  An  1  th 

• 

It  we   have   proved   the  which  we  have 

been  travelling  to  h 

the    time    may    hav< 
many  ai  mrmount  trust 

it    t<>  the  end.      It   i>    natural   and    i  th.it  we 

should  accept  the  veracity  of  our  b  " 
and    hopes.     Until    proved   the  contrary,   we   may 
timately  accept   their  ti  evident 

the  real  drift  and  tendency  of  things  in  the  uni- 
verse.     The   writer  of    the    1  to   the    Hebrews 

.  '•  Faith  is  the  su1    i  ■♦*  things  h 

the  evidence  of  things  not  seen";   and   there 

fine   truth    in   this   statement,  a  very  full  and 
ing  truth.     That  ideal  which  the  human    soul 

es  in  its  higher  hopes  and  desires  it  instinctively 
trusts  as  the  pledge  of  a  future  r<  And  reason, 

where  it  has  no  adequate  grounds  for  denial,  may 
well  accept  this  natural  mental  bias  to  trust  the 
future  for  bringing  something  better  than  the  past, 
as  an  indication  that  the  immanent  energy,  which  is 
the  central  life  of  nature  and  of  man,  is  moving  in 


OPTIMI-M  IQI 

the  direction  of  good  and  is  overruling  evil  for  the 
promotion  of  good. 

Still,  there  arc  few  people  who  can  in  all  circum- 
stances keep  this  high  ground  of  faith.  Hope  is  not 
knowledge.  Aspiration  is  not  certainty.  A  vision 
of  the  future  may  be  trustworthy,  but  it  is  not  to 
ordinary  people  so  palpable  a  reality  as  a  present 
fact.  Faith  may  be  good  evidence  for  things  not 
seen,  but  the  thin--  see  at  hand  and 

■r  so  fully  the  field  of  vision  that  they  are  apt 
to  shut  out  all  sight  «»f  this  evidence.  And  these 
things  that  .ire  seen  are  sometimes  so  inscrutably 
evil,  so  impenetrably  dark,  that,  even  though  the 
sonl  may  believe  there  is  light  beyond,  yet  it  cannot 
trace  one  ray  through  the  thicket, —  cannot  explain 
how  all  this  evil  is  to  be  transmuted  into  the  sub- 
stance of  virtue,  how  it  is  to  be  surmounted  and  put 
to  use  in   the   pi  of   the   world.      Optimism  — 

the    belief    that    the  world    is    tin-    best    possible,  and 

that  every  event  in  it  at  any  particular  time  is  the 
•  possible  in  view  of  all  the  circumstances  and  in 
reference  to  the  ultimate  good  of  the  whole  — may 
perhaps  be  a  true  theory;  and  it  may  be  a  comfort- 
ing  theory  to  the  theologian  in  his  studies,  to  the 
philosopher  in  his  speculations,  to  any  person  in 
moments  of  serenity,  when  individually  free  from 
the  pressure  of  evil  conditions.  But  I  suspect  that 
this  belief  docs  not  generally  come  to  comfort  those 
who  stand  most  in  need  of  comfort.  When  the  iron 
enters  one's  own  soul,  it  is  not  so  easy  to  be  an 
optimist.  I  can  hardly  conceive  it  possible  that 
those  classes  of  society  who  are  crushed  under  some 


TWI.N1  V-I  I. 

great  oppression,  who  are  ground  down  by  poverty, 
•mis  of  inju  1  tyranny,  who 

arc  forced  to  live  in  daily  companionship  with 

and  misery;  or  those  upon  whose  hopes  and  car. 
lias  fallen  the  blight  o  intment  and 

failure,  upon  whose  once  fair  auspices  and  happy 
home  there  has  come,  for  instance,  the  wreck  <>t 
fortune  and  love  which  persistent  intemperance 
brings   i  those — and   they  may  be  in 

the   most   guarded   and   moral  social  circles  —  wl 

smitten   by  a  sudden   blow  from  some 
villany  too  black  to  name, —  I  can  hardly 
that  any  persons  in  such   condition  ifort 

themselves  with  the  thought  that  "all  things  arc  the 
possible,"  can  look  up  out  of  their  misery,  out 
of  their  sense  of  humiliation  and  wrong,  and 
serenely,  "Whatever  is,  is  right."  No:  there  are 
ills  in  our  human  lot  too  profound,  too  heavy,  too 
bitter,  for  any  who  are  under  the  burden  of  them  to 
have  the  heart  to  say,  "This  is  all  as  it  should 
this  is  what  I  need;  this  h  the  best  thing  which 
could  possiblv  have  been  arranged  for  me."  Could 
such  a  sentiment  find  utterance,  it  would  seem,  in- 
deed, but  solemn  mockery,  and  would  betray  a  want 
of  the  very  feeling  from  which  must  come  the  motive- 
power  which  is  to  resist  the  ills  of  life  and  triumph 
over  them.  If  optimism  is  to  be  interpreted  as 
meaning  unconditionally,  in  the  moral  as  in  the 
material  universe,  that  "whatever  is,  is  right,"  as 
Pope  put  it  in  his  oft-quoted  aphorism,  if  it  mean 
that  everything  in  the  world  this  moment  is  the  best 
thing  possible  in  the  eye  of  infinite  Goodness,  and 


OPTIMISM  193 

just  as  we  might  conceive  infinite  Goodness  would 
approve  and  wish  it  to  be,  then,  to  my  mind,  opti- 
mism is  most  false  both  in  theory  and  experience. 

And,  thus  understood,  optimism  not  only  seems  to 
me  groundless  in  reason  but  dangerous  to  morals. 
I  cannot  bring  myself  to  say  that  even  all  things  are 
the  best  possible,  considered  with  reference  to  the 
after  and  ultimate  good  of  all  persons;  that  infinite 
Goodness,  though  looking  to  the  future,  were  it  to 
keep  full  control  of  human  conditions  and  actions, 
would  arrange  everything,  will  everything,  just  as 
we  find  it  to-day.  Such  a  doctrine  of  optimism  ap- 
pears to  me  to  blaspheme  infinite  Goodness  nearly 
as  much  as  did  the  old  dogma  of  predestinating  a 
portion  of  the  human  race  to  eternal  misery.  To 
suppose  that  a  Being  of  infinite  purity  could  look 
with  complacency  upon  the  assassin's  crime,  the 
swindler's  plot  of  lying  and  robbery,  the  profligate's 
infamous  lust  and  treachery,  the  cruelties  under 
which  millions  of  human  beings  have  been  crushed 
by  selfish  power,  because  in  the  future  his  omni- 
scient eye  sees  that  good  will  be  the  issue, —  much 
more,  to  suppose  that  he  has  by  his  own  free  pur- 
pose and  will  arranged  all  these  individual  acts  as 
the  best  way  of  producing  this  after  good, —  this  is 
to  violate  the  very  idea  of  goodness,  and  to  confound 
all  valid  distinction  between  right  and  wrong.  The 
only  sense  in  which  I  can  conceive  optimism  to  be 
acceptable  to  a  rational  and  morally  earnest  mind,  is 
that  the  world,  as  a  whole,  is  the  best  possible,  con- 
sidering that  human  beings  are  free,  responsible 
actors  in  it,  and  help  to  make  it  what  it  at  any  mo- 


TWEN  rY-FIVE   SERMi 

in-lit  is;   that  is,  that  the  conditions  of  humai 

with  regard  to  physical  and  moral  evil  have 
pro^;  ild  rationally  be  expected  on 

the  plan  that  man  shall  be  a  prime  agent  in  impr<> 
his  own  condition. 

Why  man  was  made  a  responsible  in   ar- 

ing  his  own  lot  and   destiny,  why  he  was   made 

subject  to  evil  and  suffering  instead  of  being  neces- 

to    a  path  of   rectitude  and    happiness,  is 

another  question;   and  a  question   which   it   maybe 

■  ■      nswer.  i  only  say  that  he  is  not 

thus  necessitated, —  that  the  human  I 

ir  individually,  has  before  it  the  tremen- 
k   of  w<>  own  way  up  and   out   from 

evil  conditions,  and  by  a  rational   and  virtuous  us 
its  own  '  i   own  destiny.      And  we 

ides,  that  tl  higher  order  of 

being,  even  with  all  the  liabilities  and  actualitie 
evil  that  attach  to  it,  than  would   be  a  condition   >>i 
existence  in  which  there  should   be  only  a  mechani- 
cal adherence  to  right     At  any  rate,  so  thin 
and,  however  better  it   might  seem,  if   we  had   all 
i    made   angels  incapable   of  going  astray,   it    is 
evident  that,   if  we  are  ever  to  reach  that  state,  it 
must  be  by  our  own  effort  and  struggle.     And  very 
likely  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  conscious  a; 
h  >od,  no  such  thing  as  the  full   development  of   a 
vital,  organic,  moral  personality,  without  this  effort, 
—  without    the    rational    perception    and    choice   of 
truth  and  right  rather  than  their  opposites.     In  his- 
tory, the  fact  that  man  by  his  own  effort  has  been 
making  his  lot  better,  that  human  virtues  have  been 


OPTIMISM  195 

continually  blotting  out  the  record  of  human  crimes 
and  woes,  that  truth  and  justice  have  triumphed 
over  wrong,  and  right  and  love  have  been  gradually 
winning  supremacy  over  brute  might  and  cruelty, — 
it  is  this  fact  that  gives  us  a  right  to  affirm  that 
there  is  a  supreme  moral  Order  ruling  in  the  affairs 
of  men.  Man  has  himself  overruled  his  own  evil 
doings.  Whenever,  therefore,  it  be  said  that  "the 
world  is  the  best  possible,"  and  that  "all  things  in 
it  are  arranged  in  the  best  possible  way  for  the  ulti- 
mate good  of  all,"  we  can  justly  use  the  optimistic 
assertion  only  in  the  sense  that  it  was  best  that  man 
should  be  left  free,  or  should  become  responsible,  to 
a  great  extent,  for  his  own  condition  ;  and  that  being 
left  free,  though  he  will  bring  many  evils  upon  him- 
self, his  moral  intelligence  can  be  trusted  to  over- 
come them,  and  ultimately  to  make  "  all  things  work 
together  for  good." 

But  Heaven  forbid  that- we  should  suppose  that, 
with  reference  to  man's  future  good,  all  present 
things  are  alike  available  as  material  ;  that  one  act 
is  as  good  as  another  ;  that  a  bad  man  is  as  good 
for  the  purpose  as  a  good  man  ;  that  wickedness 
is  as  serviceable  as  virtue ;  that  all  moral  dis- 
tinctions vanish  in  the  presence  of  some  supreme 
transforming  spirit  that  takes  all  our  human  con- 
ditions,—  the  ill  and  the  good,  the  bitter  and.  the 
sweet,  the  vicious  and  the  virtuous, —  and,  putting 
them  all  together  into  its  crucible,  straightway 
brings  forth  a  product  which  has  always  the  same 
wholesome  qualities  as  a  genuine  elixir  of  life  ! 
Heaven  forbid  that,  in  any  absolute,  unconditioned 


TWENTY-FIVE    SERM< 

mould  Bay,  "Whatever  is,  is  right,*' 
and  that  we  should  lose  our  horror  of  evil  and 
crira  .   possibly,  we  may  see  .some  way  in 

which  they  may,  by  and  by,  ages  hence  perhaps,  be 
converted  ini  I!     All  things  do,  indeed,  work 

ther  for  good.  Hut  they  do  so,  because  human 
beings  keep  clear  in  their  minds  the  distinction 
between  things  as  they  are  and  things  as  they 
OUgl      '  and   strive  to  make   the  "ought   ' 

actual.      They   do   so,    because   man  sees   the   d 

a   g i   and   evil,  and   knows   horn   daily 

observation  and  experience  thai  there  are  m 
things  in  the  world  that  are  not  right  and  that  will 
not  be  likely  to  come  right  or  be  transmuted  into 
any  form  of  goodness,  unless  human  beings  take 
hold  and  help  to  do  it.  "All  things  work  together 
for  good," — but  not  without  man  as  a  worker. 

And,  if  we  recur  to  Paul's  words,  from  which  we 

out,  we  shall  see  that  they  also  express  es- 
sentially  this  condition.  "All  things  work  together 
for  good  to  them  that  love  Corf," —  in  other  words,  to 
paraphrase  the  conditional  cl  i  them  who  look 

up  rather  than  down  ;  to  them  who  seek  the  truth. 
who  espouse  right,  who  strive  to  know  and  to  do 
the  good,  who  honor  virtue,  who  love  the  ideal 
of  infinite  excellence,  in  which  all  truth,  ri 
beauty,  goodness,  are  conceived  to  harmonize  as 
constituent  parts,  and  who  study  constantly  to  copy 
that  ideal  into  character  and  life.  In  a  word,  all 
things  work  together  for  good  to  those  who  love  and 
aim  at  the  good.  The  spirit  of  this  aspiration  and 
effort  is  the  transmuting  agency  that  converts  the 


OPTIMISM  197 

base  elements  of  human  error  and  wickedness  into 
the  pure  coin  of  virtue.  Those  to  whom  this  effort 
and  aspiration  are  wanting,  those  whose  look  is 
downward,  those  whose  career  is  only  a  yielding  to 
the  cravings  of  selfish  passions,  those  who  find  their 
most  alluring  solicitations  in  the  direction  of  sensual 
appetite,  those  who  are  bound  in  the  chains  of 
avarice  and  animalism,  those  who  have  given  them- 
selves up  to  false  and  vicious  propensities,  and  are 
making  little  or  no  struggle  against  them, —  these 
have  no  right  to  hope  that  things  will  in  any 
way  work  together  for  their  good.  The  soliciting 
spirit  of  the  eternal  Goodness  must  find  some  co- 
operating response  within  the  soul,  or  its  effort  is  in 
vain.  Not  until  that  desire  for  goodne*ss,  which 
we  cannot  suppose  is  ever  wholly  crushed  out  even 
of  the  worst  of  men,  is  somehow,  somewhere, 
aroused  into  a  positive  purpose  and  endeavor,  so 
that  the  soul  looks  and  reaches  up  again,  will  a  man 
find  himself  possessed  of  the  faculty  of  making  even 
the  ills  and  sorrows  of  his  lot  steps  in  his  ladder 
heavenward. 

If  we  apply  these  principles  to  the  problems  of 
life's  evils,  we  shall  find  them  as  true  in  practice  as 
in  theory.  Look  at  the  history  of  the  human  race. 
Humanity  has  progressed  in  proportion  to  the  activ- 
ity of  its  own  rational  and  moral  intelligence.  The 
work  of  progress  has  not  been  carried  on  by  some 
overruling  Power  outside  and  independent  of  the 
power  that  resides  in  the  human  faculties.  It  is 
through  the  human  faculties  themselves  that  the 
divine  purpose  is  unfolded,  and  the  destiny  designed 


l.)S  TWENTY-FH 

for  man  by  the  Creative  Power  is  gradually  achi< 
Henry   Ward    Beecher  once   said,    "The   elect  are 
those  who  will,  the  non-elect  are  those  who  won't." 
That  is  the  i  interpretation  of  the  Calvinistic 

doctrine  of  fore-ordination.  And  it  is  a  true  hint 
of  the  actual  historical  fact  that  the  eternal  Power 
works  through  human  a  and  depends  foi 

success,  in  no  small  measure,  upon  the  co-operation 
of  the  human  will.    Humanity  advances  and  achi 
its  -rand   triumphs,  not  through  any  spirit  of  fatalis- 
tic philosophy  that  would  fold  the  hands  an  i  piously 

to  ( rod,  hut  through  its  own  pr\ 
restie—  energies.  The  Hindu  Brahmins  have  taught 
that  men  get  nearest  to  God  when  they  renounce 
the  world  and  its  activities,  and  indulge  in  retired 
meditation,  cultivating  an  artificial  spiritual  clair- 
vo)  ince ;  and  this  sentiment   has  r<  ed  to  no 

little  extent  in  the  Christian  Church.  Hut  nearer 
the  truth  was  the  old  Creek  legend  which  repre- 
sented Hercules  as  mounting  to  Olympus  and  be- 
coming a  companion  of  tl  mtic 
labors  for  the  benefit  of  man  on  earth.  It  is  true 
that,  in  the  historical  pro  I  the  race,  the  doings 
of  evil  men  are  gradually  overrule  1  for  good,  and 
the  pernicious  result  ultimately  eliminate .1  from  the 
product  that  permanently  remains.  But  this  is  be- 
cause there  are  always  some  people,  many  people, 
who  are  seeking  and  striving  for  just  that  end; 
Herculean  hearts  and  wills  seeing  clearly  the  de- 
mands of  truth  and  right,  and  setting  themselv< 
the  task  of  meeting  them.  And  if,  as  Count  de 
Gasparin  has  well  said,  "  there  are  moments  when 


OPTIMISM  199 

certain  causes  rule  so  absolutely  that  everything 
serves  them,  war  as  well  as  peace,  defeats  as  well  as 
victories,  obstacles  as  well  as  means,"  it  is  because 
of  the  vast  momentum  which  a  moral  truth  may 
have  acquired  through  the  consenting  and  co-operat- 
ing exertions  of  many  rational  wills  to  push  it  for- 
ward and  give  it  supremacy.  Without  this,  the 
great  moments  would  never  arrive. 

And  the  same  thing  is  true  in  our  individual  ex- 
perience. We  overcome  personal  trials  and  obsta- 
cles of  every  kind,  we  defeat  evil  both  in  its  causes 
and  in  its  results,  when  our  hearts  and  wills  lay  hold 
upon  goodness  with  their  whole  strength.  In  this 
alembic  of  a  supreme  moral  purpose,  all  experiences 
arc  dissolved,  however  hard  they  may  be«to  bear, — 
temptations,  adversities,  griefs,  old  transgressions, — 
and  all  are  converted  into  materials  of  future  char- 
acter. We  then  mount  by  the  very  obstacles  that 
would  seem  to  hinder  us.  We  get  visions  of  heaven 
through  the  very  tears  that  sorrow  wrings  from  our 
eyes.  This  is  the  mood  in  which  all  things  work 
together  for  good,  the  working  spirit  being  in  the 
human  soul ;  and  it  is  in  this  mood  that  we  come  to 
understand,  with  Paul,  how  "  neither  death  nor  life, 
principalities  nor  powers,  height  nor  depth,  things 
present  nor  things  to  come,  shall  be  able  to  separate 
us  from  the  love  of  God," — which,  to  Paul,  was 
specially  manifest  in  Christ,  but  which  is  equally 
manifest  now  and  throughout  the  universe.  Through 
this  human  mood  of  aspiration  after  goodness  and 
active  receptivity  to  it,  light  streams  into  the  dark- 
est places  of  human  experience.     Often,  we  may  see 


200  TWENTY-FI\ 

how  the  evil  actually  passes  into  good, —  how,  under 
the  hammer  of  temptation  and  trial,  the  soul  may  be 
tempered  to  a  finer  virtue.  '  We    >■    men  ind  women 
under  great  burden  .  who,  in  I 

sinking  therein-,  rise  under  the  burden  to  h 
wonderful   strength  and   serenity.     We 
times   sweetness  and   purity  <>f  character 
right  out  of  the  midst  of  foul  corruption,  tfa 

of  sormw  ((inverted   in:  ity  of  holiness,"  the 

thorns  which  passion  and  wrong  may  have  pre 
!  the  brows  of  their  victi  rture  them.  I 

soming  into  crowns  of  roses  for  their  immortal  glory. 

And  with  these  principles,  which  seem  to  be  thus 
confirmed  both  in  the  a  •  history  of  the  i 

and   in   individual   experience,  we   may  even   venture 
to  ascend  to  the  larger  and  more  metaphysical  ] 
lem  of  the  existence  of  evil  in  the  plan  of 

creation.      When  we   contemplate   the  unive 
whole,  through  all  the  ages  and  epochs  of  its  i 
vellous  history,  whether  we  view  it  as  believers  in 
the  theory  of   its  gradual  evolution  or  of  its  creation 

special  acts,  what  a  scene  do  we  behold!      | 
everywhere    into   the  web    of    existence  are   Wi 
inextricably  the    opposing    elements    of    good    and 
evil !     Not  only  in  our  human  life,  but  in  the  great 
world-experience  of  which  our  human  life  is  a  ; 
the  light  and  the  shade  are  even-where  commingled. 
Light  and  darkness,  virtue  and  vice,  beauty  and  ugli- 
ness, joy  and  pain,  right  and  might,  hope  and  fear, 
order  and  violence,  love  and  hate,  creation  and  car- 
nage, life  and  death,  reason  and  passion,  justice  and 
wrong,  spiritual  aspiration  and  animal  appetite,  the 


OPTIMISM  20I 

attraction  of  a  mental  ideal  and  the  clog  and  weight 
of  physical  circumstance, —  thus  everywhere  are  the 
world  elements  matched  in  fierce  and  persistent  con- 
tention. Verily,  from  the  very  beginning  of  motion 
in  the  first  plastic  form  that  matter  assumed  in  the 
primal  origin  of  things  to  the  latest  struggle  with 
calamity  or  temptation  that  may  be  going  on  this 
moment  in  any  human  breast,  it  is  a  "struggle  for 
existence," — a  struggle  for  existence  under  that  law 
which  recent  science,  with  a  narrower  application, 
has  styled  "the  survival  of  the  fittest."  What  won- 
der if,  in  viewing  this  struggle,  theologians  have  felt 
themselves  obliged  to  conceive  of  an  incarnate  prin- 
ciple of  evil  in  some  Satanic  personage,  or  that  phi- 
losophers have  affirmed  that  the  world  is  ruled  by 
fate  rather  than  by  providence  ! 

But  science  itself,  even  in  this  very  phrase,  "sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,"  is  beginning  to  show  us  the 
mistake  of  both  theologian  and  philosopher.  For 
what  means  this  "survival  of  the  fittest"?  It 
means,  finally,  the  survival  of  the worthiest.  True, 
in  the  brute  stxuggle  tor  life,  the  word  "fittest"  has 
no  moral  import.  Yet,  even  among  brutes,  it  is  not 
by  any  means  always  the  strongest  or  the  largest  or 
the  fiercest  that  survive.  Whole  species  of  animals, 
huger  and  mightier  than  any  now  existing  on  the 
earth,  have  become  extinct.  Intelligence  comes  in 
to  help  win  the  battle.  And,  among  mankind,  sav- 
age races,  persistent,  strong,  and  fierce  in  adhering 
to  their  savage  ways,  have  yielded  to  the  higher 
intelligence  and  milder  manners  of  civilized  men. 
And  the  crudest  individual  passion  or  most  degrad- 


202  TWENTY-FH 

■  .  though  it  be  the  accumulat 
hereditary    force    of    many   generations   of    vicious 
inch,'  succumbed  again  and  again  to 

pleading  voice  of  conscience  and  the  refining  influ- 
ences of  goodness.     "Survr  :  fittest     m 
then,  in  :               ,  the  survival  of  the  best      It  me 
that,  in  this  long  struggle  for  existen    •  among  con- 
tending  I              »f  which   the  universe   is  the   scene. 
the  victory   is  finally  on  the  side  of    the    true,  the 
good,  the  beautiful,     [tn  I  finally 
the  better  of  might,  justice  triumph-,  over  wrc 
truth  dis urn 

QtO  beauty,  and  goodness  is  crowned, 
while  vice  is  enslaved  It  means,  therefore,  that 
the  struggle  is  not  merely  a  blind  conflict  of  blind 
.Ut  that  in  it  is  an  aim  ;  that  it  is  not  simply 
a  battle,  but  a  steady  drift  toward  a  goal  ;  not  a 
test  only,  but  a  march.  And  this  aim.  this  con  - 
upw  ml  tendency  and  drift,  this  advance  through  the 
conflict,  this  progress  in  the  process,  mint  have  been 
Involved   in    the    very   fir  ance   of    force   from 

which  all  things  have  come,  or  in  the  primal  sub- 
stance which  was  the  seed  of  the  universe.  In  that 
first  act  of  creation  or  first  step  in  evolution,  not 
only  was  motion,  activity,  life,  involved,  but  in  it  was 
a  power  that  determined  the  direction  of  the  motion 
and  the  life.  In  other  words,  in  that  first  organific 
impulse,  the  true  and  the  right  were  weighted  with  a 
power  (a  power  inherent  in  their  very  nature)  suffi- 
cient to  enable  them  to  overcome  all  obstacles,  and 
to  survive  all  possible  exigencies  of  the  struggle. 
Evil  may  be  the  condition  of  development,  the  pain 


OPTIMISM  203 

incident  to  growth  and  birth.  But  good  is  the  sub- 
stance of  the  developing  power  itself.  More  than 
condition  or  incident,  it  is  that  which  gives  to  the 
process  impulse,  direction,  and  goal. 

And  what  is  this  but  to  say  that  there  is  a  Provi- 
dence in  the  affairs  of  the  world  and  in  the  affairs  of 
men  ?     Literally,  a  pro-videns  —  a  foreseeing  of,  and 
a  general  aiming  toward,  an  end.     Not  a  Providence 
merely  vouched  for  by  questionable  tradition  or  rest- 
ing on  proof-texts  that  vanish  before  rational  inquiry, 
but  a  Providence  the  existence  of  which  is  proved 
by  the  irrefragable  testimony  of  science.     Not  the 
kind  of  Providence  which  is  supposed  to  intervene 
in  the  affairs  of  life  in  special   emergencies,  and  to 
come  at  every  pleading  desire  that  man  may  lift  to 
the  skies  for  personal  relief  from  some  pain  or  peril, 
but  a  Providence  immovably  established  in  the  very 
order,  law,  and  life  of  the  universe  itself ;   a  Provi- 
dence, through  all  the  ages  and  epochs  of  the  past 
as  in  the  present,  ever  educing  good  out  of  ill,  and 
in  the   human   world  doing  this  by  the    successful 
incarnation  of  its  purpose  in  the  hearts  and  wills  of 
human  beings;   a  Providence   that    this  moment  is 
soliciting  every  man  and  woman  among  us,  through 
the  knowledge  that  our  minds  may  gather,  through 
the    pressure   of    conscience,    and    through    all   the 
gentle  sentiments  of  human  sympathy  and  helpful- 
ness, to  become  willing  instruments  for  working  out 
its  beneficent  intent. 

November  23,  1S73. 


XV. 
MUTUAL  SOCIAL  RESPONSIBILITY. 

"Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" — Gkn.  iv.,  9. 

••  1  In.-  narrow-minded  a-k,   [s   thU  <mi<.-  ol  our  tribe,  or  is  he  a 

ition,  the 
world  is  but  one  family." — Ahi  ikm  Hindu. 

A  i.i  MINED  author*  saws  that  "Cain,  the  first 
murderer,  was  also  the  first  civilizer."  And  it  is 
most  probably  true,  as  he  ind  others  maintain,  that 
the  traditional  story  of  the  contest  between  Cain 
and  Abel,  resulting  in  the  slaughter  of  the  latter, 
instead  of  being  a  narrative  of  a  personal  strife 
between  two  brothers,  is  a  relic  of  a  larger  contest 
between  two  elans  or  classes  of  men,  the  shepherds 
and  the  husbandmen, —  between  a  nomadic  tribe, 
subsisting  upon  flocks  and  herds,  and  claiming  an 
unlimited  right  of  pasturage,  and  an  agricultural 
tribe,  who  had  begun  to  till  the  -round,  and  who 
claimed,  as  against  the  wandering  herdsmen,  the 
right  of  property  in  the  soil  they  had  taken  to 
cultivate.  Of  these  tribes,  Abel  is  the  representa- 
tive of  the  herdsmen,  Cain  of  the  planters  ;  and  the 
conflict,  which  may  have  been  long,  bitter,  and 
bloody,  was  really  between  primitive  barbarism  and 
the    first    impulse   to    civilization,   since    civilization 

*Dr.  F.  H.  Hedge,  in  the  Primeval  World  of  Hebrew  Tradition. 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  205 

begins  with  acquiring  a  right  of  possession  to  the 
soil.  And,  in  this  conflict,  civilization,  or  the  class 
of  agriculturists  represented  by  Cain,  was  the  con- 
queror; and  yet  not  wholly  so,  since  Cain,  though 
victorious  in  battle  and  putting  Abel  to  death,  is 
represented  also  as  being  compelled  to  flee  into 
other  lands  to  pursue  his  calling :  which,  it  is 
claimed,  signifies  that  the  husbandmen,  though 
worsting  the  herdsmen  in  battle,  yet  continued  to 
be  harassed  by  them,  and  finally  emigrated  beyond 
their  reach  to  a  new  country. 

This  interpretation  of  the  old  tradition  clearly 
turns  the  tables  in  favor  of  Cain.  Though  not 
necessarily  absolving  him  from  guilt,  it  represents 
him  as  standing  for  the  interests  of  civilization  and 
progress,  and  so  far  relieves  him  somewhat  of  the 
stigma  of  a  mere  criminal  which  the  tradition  has 
always  fastened  to  his  name.  Vet  Cain,  though 
representing  historically  a- better  cause  than  Abel, 
may  nevertheless  have  been  guilty  of  gross  injustice 
and  cruelty  in  maintaining  his  cause,  just  as  to-day 
the  white  settlers  on  the  Western  frontier  of  out- 
country,  though  they  are  agents  in  promoting  civil- 
ization and  are  pioneers  of  a  higher  mode  of  society 
and  life  than  the  Indian  barbarism  which  they  dis- 
place, are  yet,  in  their  encroachments  on  the  nomadic 
Indian  possessions  and  habits,  guilty  of  the  greatest 
wrongs  and  outrages,  such  as  must  forever  disgrace 
the  civilization  which  they  represent.  We  may 
therefore  easily  enough  accept  the  new  rendering 
of  this  ancient  story,  with  the  new  dignity  it  gives 
to  the  character  of  Cain,  without  doing  away  entirely 


206  TWENTY-FIVE    M.K.M 

with  that  feature  of  the  story  which  is  i  ert  dnly  most 

minent  in  the   Hebrew  narrative, —  tl 
Cain's  guilt.     If  the  story  he  a  mythical  re; 
tion  of  a  primitive  contest  in  tween  the 

elem  barbarism  and  civilization,  it  none  the 

contains   a   strong   protest   from  the   dawning 
in    ma!!  ami 

bloodshed.     If  il  us  a  relic  of  a  ne 

irrepressible  n  two  different  systems 

of  society  in  the  }  of  human   existence,  it 

discloses  also  that  the  mora] 

t>>  predominate  in  man,  since,  though  Cain  may  i 
■.  for  the  better  as  well  as  str<  i 
!!     rew  sympathy,  nevertheless,  went 
toward  Abel,  his  victim,  ami  Cain,  though  the  "first 
civilizer,"  \*  is  handed  down  to  history,  not  for 
glory,  hut  as  the  first  man  whose  hands  were 
with  his  brother' 

We  especially  may  find  a  double  significance,  a 
philosophical  as  well  ls  moral,  in  thai  portion  "[  this 
old  legend  which  contains  Cain's  reply  to  Jehovah, 
who  is   re  ted  as  looking  tor  Abel.      Cain   . 

as  if  in  proti  '.  .anst  the  question,  "Am  I  my 
brothei's  keeper?"  If  we  look  for  it,  we  may  find 
for  this  reply,  in  the  light  of  history,  a  certain  phil- 
osophical justification.  We  may  conceive  it  to  be  an 
utterance  of  that  primitive  tendency  to  individual 
development — to  self-assertion  and  self-maintenance 
and  the  exercise  of  personal  faculty  and  power  — 
which  marks  the  first  stage  in  the  development  of 
a  race,  just  as  a  corresponding  assertion  of  personal 
independence  and  will  marks  the  first  stage  in  the 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  207 

unfolding  of  human  character  in  a  child.  The  child's 
first  instinct  is  to  look  out  for  self:  to  care  for 
others  comes  later.  So,  doubtless,  the  primitive  in- 
stinct of  the  race  was  to  provide  for  self, —  to  follow 
individual  desires  and  get  individual  power, —  Abel 
for  himself,  Cain  for  himself,  each  striving  to  the 
best  of  his  ability  for  what  he  individually  represents. 
And,  looking  at  the  matter  from  this  point  of  view, 
it  may  be  said  that  the  question  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Cain  signifies  this  primitive  individualism, —  this 
necessary  selfism,  which  first  sets  society  in  motion. 
It  was  as  if  Cain  had  said  :  "  I  am  the  keeper  of  my 
own  principle,  not  of  Abel's.  It  is  a  struggle  for 
existence  between  two  fundamental  principles  of 
society  ;  between  different  and  irreconcilable  modes 
of  living;  between  nomadic  habits,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  desire  of  a  fixed  habitation  and  recog- 
nized rights  of  property  in  the  soil,  on  the  other; 
between  barbarism  and  civilization.  And  the  strug- 
gle must  go  on  till  one  or  the  other  principle  con- 
quers. If  Abel's  principle  conquers,  well  :  it  will 
bring  its  own  consequences.  If  mine  is  victorious, 
better,  and  better  fruits.  But  the  two  principles  can- 
not exchange  places  nor  help  each  other."  We  may 
conceive  that  the  alleged  answer  of  Cain  in  vindica- 
tion of  himself  had  some  such  philosophical  basis  as 
this,  when  we  consider  the  legend  as  traditionally 
embodying  clashing  tribal  tendencies,  and  not  a  mere 
personal  quarrel. 

But  this  is  not  its  deepest  nor  truest  significance. 
No  philosophy  at  the  time  could  reason  away  the 
moral  consciousness  of  guilt  which  the  answer  vainly 


TV.  . 

attempts  to  cover  over  and  [*he  ••■■ 

dicate  that  primitive  man  had  all  and 

was  capable  of  acting  up  »n  another  social  principle 
than  self-interest     That    single  word  brother  i 
the  germ  of  a  new  principle.     It  points  to  relations 
between  man  and  man.  whit  their  kin- 

dred blood.      It  anion    inter 

-,  and  aims.    It  is  an  ind< 
origin  and  forward  t<>  a  common  <;< 

etual  reminder  of  comm  >m  it, 

we  may  unfold  all  the  varied  links  which  bind  hu- 
man bei  r  in  the  t.  The 
impulse  to  individual  activity  for  individual 
though  a  mighty  agent  in  civilization,  would  by  il 
alone  never  bring  ch  the  very  bond  oi 
iety  would  be  Win  d.  It  is  when  individ- 
ual enterprise  and  welfare  are  turned  to  the  common 

jh  the  recognition  of  mutual  and  i 
obligations  between  man  and  man,  that  S 

ns.     The  central  signii 
•   is  reciprocity,  n  sympathy 

.   each  for  all    and    all    for   each, —  the  individual 
development  and  achievement  harmonizing  ; 
with  the  general  advancement,  and  not 
being    separated    from    it.      Humanity    is    so    linked 

her  that,  if  one  member  suffer,  all  mus 
with  it,  or,  if  one  member  rejoice,  all  must  re 
with  it. 

And  this  is  the  moral  significance  of  this  feature 
of  the  story  of  Cain  which  we  are  now  consider- 
ing. It  discloses  the  principle  of  brotherhood  as  the 
most  indispensable  element  of  human  society.    Cain's 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL   RESPONSIBILITY  209 

philosophy  was  utterly  helpless  to  drive  away  the 
remorse  that  fell  upon  his  conscience  because  of  the 
(-rime  he  had  committed  against  his  brother.  All 
the  time  another  voice  within  him  was  declaring: 
"I  am  my  brother's  keeper.  We  were  sent  into 
this  world  to  live  together,  to  work  together.  And 
my  brother's  blood  cries  against  me  from  the  ground 
till  I  make  atonement  for  the  wroi  The  legend 

:>uts  the  assertion  of  brotherhood  first  into  the 
mouth  of  Jehovah,  but  the  God  that  spoke  was  the 
lordly  voice  of  conscience  in  Cain's  own  breast 
If  this  old  story  contains  under  a  mythical  dress  an 
historical  relic  of  some  primitive  contest  between 
barbarism  and  civilization,  it  surely  contains  no  less 
the  relic  of  a  moral  contest  between  the  principle  of 
selfish  aggrandizement  and  passion  and  the  dawning 
sentiments  of  justice  and  fraternity.  Its  grand  les- 
son is  that  the  principle  of  fraternity  is  at  the  foun- 
dation of  human  society,  and  that  any  violation  of 
this  principle,  any  injustice  and  sin  of  man  against 
his   fellow-man,    tends   to   the  nization 

destruction   of    society.     Other  ancient   records   be- 

!  ill.-  Hebrew  bring  us  the  same  sentiment  as 
that  which  I  quoted  from  India  as  a  joint  text,  and 
which  reads  as  a  response  to  Cai'  ion. 

But   this   lesson,   though   set   so   many   thousands 

:ars  ago,  thc  world  has  been  very  slow  to  learn  ; 
and  it  needs  to  be  reiterated  as  emphatically  to-day 
as  when  it  was  first  discovered.  Let  me  repeat  it. 
Fraternity,  brotherhood,  mutual  justice  and  helpful- 
ness between  man  and  man,  is  the  bond  of  society  ; 
and    any   sin   committed    against    this   sentiment  of 


210 

rnity  is  not  merel)  a  wrong  to  some  Individual, 
but  tends  at  once  to  < 

The  human  race  is  joined  r  in  a  partner- 

ship from  which  there  is  no  i  mil  all  the  m 

iciety  are  jointly  and  severally  responsible 
its  moral  condition.  Wickedness  may  run  a  good  i 
farther  back  foi  the  will  and 

sions  <>f  its  individual  doer,  just 
will  not  stop  with  I  Yet  the  responsibility 

somewhere  upon  individual  human  hearts  and 
wills,  though  it  may  be  divided  among  many,  and  is 
n<>t   to   be  explain,  d  away  by  any  philosophy  that 
would  shift  the  cause  off  from  man  to  circumstarj 
to    fate,   or  to   God.     We  h    and   all,  our 

3 :  upon  our  acts,  our  charai  ters,  our 
sentiments  and   purposes  depends,  not  only  om 
welfare,   but    the   well-bi  all    with    whom    OUT 

lives  anywhere   come  in  c 

Others  also  whom  we  may  never  meet,  and  who  are 
even  vet  unborn.  The  threads  of  our  lives,  what- 
ever their  texture,  be  they  coarse  or  fine,  strong  or 
weak,  beautiful  or  Ugly,  are  taken  up  and  woven  into 
the  character  of  the  human  race.  Whatevei 
or  purity,  or  moral  firmness  and  fidelity  we  have, 
whatever  good  act  we  do  or  habit  of  heroic  virtue  we 
cultivate,  it  goes  to  enhance  the  Strength  and  virtue 
of  the  whole.  Whatever  moral  defect  we  have, 
whatever  corruption,  whatever  vice,  whatever  un- 
tamed passion,  whatever  secret  or  open  sin,  it  goes 
to  make  society  poor,  weak,  flimsy,  and  introduces 
into    it    elements   of    disruption    and   decay.     Every 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  211 

human  being,  therefore,  is  in  some  sense  his 
brother's  keeper.  Upon  the  measure  of  integrity 
possessed  by  each  person  depend  the  average  con- 
science and  purity  of  the  race. 

And,  now,  I  want  to  make  these  propositions  clear 
by  a  few  illustrations.  Consider,  first,  the  moral 
bearing  of  the  physical  unity  of  the  race.  The  phys- 
ical ties  that  bind  mankind  together  are  very  subtile, 
aching,  and  powerful.  We  ran  see  them  in 
their  effects,  though  we  may  understand  little  of 
their  method  of  operation.  Very  literally  is  it  true, 
as  the  old  Hebrew  writer  of  Exodus  said,  that  "the 
iniquity  of  the  fathers  is  visited  upon  the  children 
even  unto  the  third  and  fourth  generation."  Into 
what  wretched  conditions  of  existent  e  vast  numbers 
of  human  beings  are  born!     What  :red  tem- 

peraments and  passions,  what  disease  and  imbecility, 
what  predispositions  to  vice  and  crime,  are  entailed 
in  the  blood  !  We  are  so  connected  by  the  physical 
tie  of  birth  that  we  must  necessarily  suiter  for  one 
another,  and  not  only  for  one  another's  sullen 
but  for  one  another's  sins.  And,  in  the  operation  of 
this  law,  the  innocent  necessarily  suffer  with  the 
guilty.  The  innocent  babe,  in  whose  little  life  is 
wrapped  so  many  motherly  hopes  and  joys,  and  in 
whom  the  moral  consciousness  has  not  yet  dawned, 
may  be  cut  off  by  an  untimely  death,  because, 
through  the  laws  of  hereditary  descent,  it  may  have 
in  its  veins  some  drop  of  tainted  blood,  the  virus  of 
which  has  been  handed  down  from  the  vices  of  some 
ancestor  we  know  not  how  remote.  Or,  if  it  live 
and   grow  up   to  manhood,  there  may  be  suffering 


212  TWENTY-FIVE    SI  .KM 

from  weakness  and  disease,  struggle  with  fierce 
temptations,  and  lapses  into  evil  ways,  because 
physical  and  mental  constitution  inherited  from  the 
same  vicious  source.  A  man,  apparently  well  born, 
having  fine  abilities  and  a  worthy  ambition,  finds 
himself,  perhaps,  iii  early  manhood  taken  captive  by 
the  demon  of  intemperance,  and  all  his  fair  pros] 
blighted   for    life,   becau  ither 

indulged  overmuch   his  grovelling  sensual   app< 
for   alcoholic    stimulus.      So,    again,    the   saintliest 
woman    that    walks    the    earth,    dispensing    charity, 
virtue,  and  moral   healing  wherever  she  goes,  may 

,f  dread!  generated   in   some  haunt  of 

filth  and  crime,  of  which  her  pure  nature  hardly 
dreams  the  existence.  And  thus  it  is  throughout 
the  world.  The  human  race  is  imperfect,  tainted, 
earthy,  given  largely  to  animalism,  has  a  good  deal 
of  bad  blood  in  its  veil.  .  misery, 

jical  and  moral  infirmity,  premature  death,  men- 
tal atrophy  and  inertia  —  all  the  elements  that  tend 
to  the  dissolution  of  society  —  inhere  in  this  general 
imperfection.  What  a  terrible  social  fact  —  and  a 
terribly  damning  fact  against  Christian  civilization  — 
is  that  which  a  physician  in  New  York  has  recently 
brought  to  light  from  certain  criminal  statistics  of 
the  State, —  the  tragic  story  of  a  pauper  girl  who. 
some  six  generations  ago,  having  been  left  unpro- 
tected to  the  mercies  of  society,  and  falling  a  victim 
to  man's  lust,  became  the  ancestress  of  two  hundred 
criminals  and  as  many  more  idiots,  drunkards,  lu- 
natics, and  paupers !  Verily,  the  iniquity  of  the 
fathers  is  visited  upon  the  children  with  retributive 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  213 

usury;  nor   does    it  stop    at  "the    third  and  fourth 
generation." 

And,  looking  at  considerations  bearing  on  practi- 
cal motives  of  conduct,  what  is  there  that  should  be 
more  calculated  to  arouse  conscience  to  a  sense  of 
the  terrific  evil  of  moral  transgression,  of  its  mean- 
ness as  well  as  its  wickedness,  than  the  knowledge 
that,  long  after  we  have  passed  away  from  earth,  our 
sins  will  live  on  in  our  posterity  to  corrupt  the  very 
fountains  of  life,  and  to  spread  devastation,  death, 
and  sorrow  among  the  innocent  ?  What  father  is 
there  who,  if  he  could  certainly  know  that  his  vice 
is  to  slay  his  own  son,  would  not  by  every  moral 
effort  in  his  power  stay  the  malignant  force?  Yet 
his  vice  is  most  certainly  to  descend  in  retribu- 
tive woe  upon  somebody's  child  as  innocent  as  his. 
Some  life  is  somewhere  to  suffer  and  have  its  days 
shortened  for  his  guilt.  For  the  vices  which  any 
man  or  woman  may  harbor,  under  however  respect- 
able an  exterior,  there  must  be  somewhere  at  some 
time  wretchedness,  lamentation,  disease,  and  death 
perhaps  before  the  normal  time.  For  every  viola- 
tion of  the  moral  law  there  must  be  retribution, 
atonement, —  not  before  it  is  committed  (that  were 
impossible),  but  afterwards.  And,  in  this  atoning 
retribution,  the  innocent  necessarily  suffer  with  the 
guilty;  not  by  any  arbitrary  decree,  but  because, 
through  the  law  of  physical  relationship,  we  are  all 
of  one  race,  of  one  blood,  and  are  so  closely  and 
variously  bound  together  that  no  man  can  either 
live  or  die  to  himself  alone. 

Yet,  over  against  this  dark  picture,  we  can  place 


214 

a  brighte  y     '  •  iraulative  by 

litary  descent,  just  tive,  as  \  ice 

Man   is  not   necessarily  the 

not  •  rily  in  hope!  idage   to   hereditary 

evil.      Again    and    again,   by    sheer   inward    mora! 
power  has  that   chain    been  broken,  the  man. 

•  hound,  has 

lemons,  and  tab  >n  of  the  domain  of 

his  own  nature.     Even  i  1  in  life 

pei  •    •  y  and  -  •  a  —  ha\  e 

broken  the  sway  of  confirmed  evil  !' 
uj>  again  in  the  dignity  of  manly  power.     This  moral 

lit  ;   it  may  I  hut  it  is  not   inr 

sihle.      And  what  may  be  done  by  the  more   hopeful 
irly  training  and  education  in  overcom- 
ing evil  tendem  ies  inherent  in  bad  birth  and  sur- 

rd.     Tl  that 

are   removinj  bond    children   from   the  sti 

into    good    homes    furnish    the    proof.      The    lav. 
"  selection,"  of  which  we  are  hearing  so  much  in  the 
realm  of   nature,    may  assuredly  be  made  avail 
for  the  benefit  of  mankind   through   human  volition. 
Bad  blood  may  be  improved.     The  virus  of  phys 
and  moral  di  lay  eventually  be  neutralized  by 

generations  of  virtuous  living,  and  pass  out  of  the 
human  stock.  This  is  not  conjecture,  but  a  si 
ment  that  rests  on  solid  fa<  ts.  And  in  the  teaching 
of  >uch  facts  is  man's  hope,  here  his  unfailing  in- 
centive to  effort.  The  law  by  which  moral  evil 
accumulates  upon  itself  its  own  natural  retribution 
by  corrupting  the  race  operates  equally  for  the  pres- 
ervation and  growth  of  virtue  :    with  this  important 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  215 

addendum,  that  we  may  believe  the  primal  and  eter- 
nal Power  to  be  on  the  side  of  virtue. 

Let  us  consider  again  this  law  of  mutual  social 
responsibility  in  another  aspect  more  exclusively 
moral,—  the  joint  responsibility  of  the  individual 
members  of  society  for  the  general  moral  condition 
and  the  moral  public  opinion  of  the  community. 
We  cannot  justly  visit  the  whole  condemnation  of 
vice  and  crime  upon  those  who  are  publicly  repro- 
bated as  vicious  and  criminal.  The  crime  which 
breaks  out  upon  the  surface  of  society,  in  the  low 
haunts  of  degradation  and  ignorance,  is  but  the  ex- 
ternal appearance  of  a  moral  disease  which  extends 
far  back  and  into  very  different  grades  of  society. 
The  poison  shows  itself  at  those  weak  spots  which 
are  unprotected  by  knowledge  or  unguarded  by  a 
sense  of  social  respectability,  and  where  the  very 
atmosphere  is  foul  with  contagious  vice;  but  it  be- 
gins, and  continues  to  be  \a\,  from  a  very  different 
source.  It  begins  with  vicious,  ungoverned  propen- 
sities, wherever  found.  It  is  nourished  from  homes 
and  characters  that  are  outwardly  reputable.  Ii  you 
would  read  my  meaning  more  clearly,  look  at  that 
cancerous  spot  in  modern  society  called  "the  social 
evil"  See  the  women  of  the  class  on  whom  Jesus 
looked  with  tender  compassion,  but  against  whom 
Christian  civilization  has  pronounced  the  awful 
anathema  "abandoned";  and  who  are  abandoned 
of  all  self-respect,  of  all  true  love,  of  all  womanly 
grace  and  purity,  and  who  are  almost  abandoned  by 
society  itself.  But  are  they  the  sole  sharers  in  this 
social  guilt, —  they,  and  the  vile  creatures,  male  or 


2l6  TWENTY-FIVE    SERW 

female,  who  help  them  to  ply  their  Infamous  calling  ? 

<  >r  is  it,  think  you,  the  class  of  men  who  are  socially 
low,   poor,  and  id    that    support    this    \ 

Alas,  no!     The  accountability  does  not  stop  the 

it  hardly,  indeed,  begins  with  either  of  these 
I     •  poor  and  degrade  1  have  not  the  iry  finan- 

cial means  nor  the  arts  of  fascination  that  the  vice 
requires.  It  is  men  who  have  money  and  can  bestow 
gifts,  men  who  have  social  position  and  who  are  out- 
wardly decorous  and  reputable,  that  furnish  the 
i  hief  susten  mce  of  this  great  evil ;  and  it  is  because 
SS  of  men,  nun  who  help  to  make  public 
opinion  and  may  even  be  law-makers,  arc  sharers  in 
visibility  for  the  evil,  that  it  is  made  SO  difficult 
for  the  civil  law  to  reach  the  evil.  No:  it  is  not 
the  poor  creatures  whom  societ)  "abandoned" 

who  are  the  chief  sinners  in  this  sin.  The  evil  has 
no  such  simple  solution  as  that.  But  all  that  class  <■! 
men  whose  ungoverned  passions  create  and  sustain 
these  abandoned  creatures  are  responsible  sharers  in 
the  crime;  and  they  may  be  men  whom  society,  the 
"best  society,"  is  receiving  with  confidence  to  its 
bosom,  and  who  are  prou  !  of  their  "good  standing  " 
in  circles  of  culture  and  refinement.  Well  ha 
been  called  "the  social  evil,"  though  the  name 
seems  to  have  been  chosen  delicately  to  veil  the 
vice ;  for  it  is  the  evil  which  more  than  any  other, 
perhaps,  spreads  its  roots  underneath,  and  overshad- 
ows with  its  baleful  branches,  all  grades  of  social 
condition,  and  for  which  society  itself  is  jointly  re- 
sponsible. Not  infrequently  does  it  break  out  into 
woful  domestic  tragedy  and  bloodshed.     But   think 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  217 

you  that  the  wretched  hands  that  may  hold  the  mur- 
derous weapon  are  alone  guilty  ?  Ah  !  the  blood 
cries  out  against  other  hands,— hands  that  may 
seem  to  be  clean  ;  hands  that  yours  may  take  in  the 
confidence  of  business  every  day,  or  that,  kid-gloved, 
may  be  welcomed  to  your  parlors.  It  cries  out 
against  the  loose  public  opinion  which  permits  to 
men,  without  great  loss  of  repute,  a  license  of  pas- 
sion for  which  it  condemns  woman  to  perpetual  in- 
famy. But,  however  lax  be  the  law  of  public  opin- 
ion, by  the  stern,  unerring  laws  of  nature,  society  is 
held  accountable  for  this  evil,  and  upon  society  falls 
the  awful  retribution  for  the  guilt.  One  sex  cannot 
suffer  without  the  other  sex  suffering  with  it.  No 
part  of  society  can  be  victimized  without  other  parts 
feeling  the  outrage  and  paying  the  penalty  for  it. 
And  society  never  writes  the  word  "abandoned" 
against  the  character  of  even  one  woman,  but  that 
nature's  laws,  and  the  Almighty  Power  that  executes 
its  will  through  them,  brand  the  same  word,  or  a  still 
worse  moral  curse,  upon  some  man's  guilty  brow. 

This  silent  partnership  in  social  responsibility  may 
be  illustrated  again  by  considering  the  necessary 
conditions  of  any  nation's  progress.  Look,  for  in- 
stance, at  the  history  of  our  own  country  with  refer- 
ence to  the  institution  of  slavery  and  the  condition 
of  the  negro  race.  It  was  shown  by  experience  to 
be  absolutely  impossible  for  the  country  to  develop 
its  fundamental  ideas  of  republican  liberty  and  equal 
justice  even  for  the  white  race,  so  long  as  these  prin- 
ciples were  violated  in  respect  to  the  negro.  The 
evil  reacted  upon  the  slave-owners,  and  made  them 


T\VENTY-FI\ 

ponsible  despots  instead  of  republican  citii 
It  made  itself  felt  throughout  the  whole  country, 

and  was  an  incubus  upon  the  success  of  the  repub- 
lic tO  just  the  extent  that  it  was  I  repub- 
lican principles.  Finally,  the  righteous  retribul 
culminated  in  the  war  of  the  rebel 
there  was  no  sal  pe  for  the  n  I  by 
granting  to  the  negro  the  long-denied  i  i  lib- 
.  and  making  him  a  re<  rtner  in  the 
Struggle  and  in  the  victory.  The  same  chain  that 
bound  his  limbs  as  a  slave  fa  tened  him  as  a  mill- 
stone t<»  the  nation's  neck  ;  and  the  nat  ion  was  forced 
to  break  that  chain,  in  order  to  ;  I  from  mor- 
tal   peril.      So    it   lias   been    since   the  war,  and   so   it 

must  continue  to  be  for  yeai  le:   the 

prosperity,   peai  le  country,  are   inextricably 

bound    up    with    the    W  mdition.       However 

much  any  persons  may  wish  it  were  not  so,  and  may 
be   inclined  to  rue,  it'  not    to  curse,  the  day  which 

brought  the  black   man  into  the  country,  here  1 
four  or  five  millions       ■         .  making  ail  element  that 
will  not  permit  itself  to  be   forgotten  nor  overlooked 
among  the  forces  that  are  shaping  the  natii 
tiny.     In  a  hundred  ways  is  the  nation  constantly 
warned  that   it    cannot   evade   the   responsibility  of 
being  the  keeper  of    the  black    man's  rights.      His 
destiny  is  the  country's  destiny.     Leave  such  a  mass 
of  population   with  only  partial   civil   rights,  unedu- 
cated, degraded,  under  the  ban  of  social   prejudice, 
with   the  ballot  it  may  be,  but   with   no   knowli 
how  to  use  it,  and  the  nation  is  maimed,  burdened, 
and  hindered  in  its  progress  to  just  the  extent  of 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  2IO, 

their  degradation.  Nor  is  the  evil  confined  to  the 
South,  but  must  be  felt  to  some  extent  in  every  part 
of  the  body  politic.  The  nation  cannot  go  on,  and 
leave  any  part  of  its  citizenship  behind.  It  will  be 
held  back  to  just  the  extent  that  it  leaves  any  class 
with  rights  denied,  with  wrongs  unatoned.  It  will 
be  free  for  progress  just  in  proportion  as  it  guaran- 
tees justice,  education,  and  a  fair  opportunity  to  all. 
The  prosperity  of  the  nation  is  the  prosperity  of  its 
members. 

Any  of  the  old  countries  of  Europe  might  furnish 
us  the  same  example.  Look  at  England.  When  we 
consider  only  her  aristocratic  and  educated  classes,  of 
what  prosperity  and  social  progress  does  she  not  seem 
capable  ?  All  the  resources  of  wealth,  of  culture,  of 
science,  of  ancient  national  inheritance  and  noble 
blood,  are  in  her  hands  to  wield  for  social  achieve- 
ment and  advance.  But,  clinging  to  her  skirts  and 
fastened  by  tics  that  cannot  be  severed,  are  millions 
of  poverty-stricken  laborers,  an  ignorant  mass  of 
degradation,  pauperism,  intemperance,  animalism  ; 
and  England,  with  all  her  riches,  culture,  and  s< 
refinement,  finds  herself  confronting  social  problems 
the  very  presentation  of  which  seems  to  threaten 
the  stability  of  her  social  order  and  upon  the  suc- 
cessful solution  of  which  the  perpetuity  of  her  insti- 
tutions depends.  It  is  clear  that  the  nation  has 
reached  that  point  where  it  is  decreed  by  the  laws 
of  social  destiny  that  the  aristocratic  and  educated 
class  can  advance  no  farther  by  itself,  but  can  only 
progress  by  lifting  up  and  carrying  forward  the  mass 
of   the  people.     All  classes,  however  separated   by 


220  .  i  RMONS 

artificial    lines  of    distinction,   arc   in    reality  welded 
together  and  to  a  common  fate. 

The  present  angry  conflict  between  capital  and 
labor  presents  another  illustration,  which  I  cannot, 
however,  unfold  at  this  time.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
there  can  be  no  solution  of  this  problem  except  by 
a  just  practical  recognition  on  both  sides  of  thi 
of  mutual  responsibility  in  industrial  enterprise. 

And  so  it  is  throughout  mankind.  Across  all 
lines  of  class  separation  —  the  lines  that  may  be 
drawn  by  wealth,  by  culture,  by  occupation,  by  fam- 
ily pedigree  and  social  rank,  and  even  by  vice  ami 
crime  —  stretch  living  links  of  natural  kinship  and 
those  deeper  laws  of  social  organization  which  hold 
firmly  all  classes  together,  and  bind  them  to  one 
ultimate  destiny.  By  these  strong  though  unseen 
ties,  the  solidarity  of  the  race  is  established,  and 
every  man  is  made  to  some  extent  the  keeper  of 
every  other  man's  happiness  and  virtue. 

Does  it  seem  to  inveigh  Lgainst  the  goodness  of 
providential  law  that  there  should  be  this  general 
sharing  of  responsibility,  and  that  ignorance,  vice, 
and  indolence  should  thus  come  as  a  burden  upon 
the  good,  enlightened,  and  industrious,  hindering 
their  progress,  and  that  the  retribution  of  suffering 
for  moral  transgression  should  fall  upon  the  inno- 
cent as  well  as  the  guilty  ?  Rather,  let  me  say,  as 
the  concluding  point  of  the  theme,  this  method  dis- 
closes the  very  pathway  through  which  the  great 
providential  purpose  works  to  benefit  mankind.  By 
this  law  of  mutual  responsibility  or  of  a  common 
imputation  of  many  of  the  consequences  of  wrong- 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  221 

doing   to   innocent    and    guilty  alike,— this    law  by 
which  all  classes  of  society  are  so  affiliated  together 
that  no  man  liveth  and  no  man  dieth  to  himself, —  it 
is  ordained    and    guaranteed    that   all    parts    of   the 
human    race   shall    hold   together   and   advance   to- 
gether  in  the    path  of   amelioration  and    progress; 
that   no  portion,  however  favored,  shall    get  so  far 
ahead  as  to  be  incapable  of   leading  the  rest;  and 
that    no    portion,    however   degraded    and    criminal, 
shall   be    left    so  far   behind   as  to  be  incapable  of 
being   led.     Hereby,   the    light,   knowledge,    virtue, 
science,  culture,  refinement,  power,  achieved  by  the 
best  portions  of  the  race,  are  put  under  tribute  to  the 
advantage  of  the  poorest  and  lowest.     Nature's  laws 
are  set  solidly  against  monopolies.     Even  the  seem- 
ingly harsh  laws  of  contagion  and  disease,  implicat- 
ing whole  communities  in  torture  and  sorrow  for  one 
man's   ignorance   or  vice,  are    ministers,  stern   but 
merciful,    to   awaken    among   those   who    have    the 
knowledge   and   the    power  an    active  interest  that 
shall  set  itself  to  the  task  of  eradicating  the  error 
and  the  vice  whence  such  miseries  spring.     Thus,  it 
is  irrevocably  decreed  by  the  very  laws  and  forces 
of  the  social  organism  that  the  highest  portions  o\ 
the  race  shall  raise  up  the  lowest,  the  most  advanced 
draw  after  them  the  weak  and  ignorant,  and  none  be 
left  hopelessly  and  helplessly  in  the  rear  to  perish  of 
their  own  imbecility.     However   high  any  may  lift 
their  heads  into  the  light  of  mental  and  moral  power 
and  into  the  clear  atmosphere  of  self-control,  their 
feet    are   planted    still    on    the   old    common    earth 
whence  the  race  has  sprung,  and  where  many  indi- 


222  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

vidua!    souls   and    tribes   are  still  grovelling  in  the 

degradation  of  ignorance  and  animal  passion  ;  and 
from  all  around  sordid  hands,  which  cannot  be 
turned  aside,  are  stretched  up,  clutching  for  support 
and  help.  "Give  us,"  they  pray,  "in  our  darkc 
of  your  light,  in  our  despair  of  your  hope,  in  our 
helplessness  of  your  strong  leadership.  Hold  us  by 
the  hand,  that  we  sink  not,  but  be  lifted  up  with 
you."  And  the  Divine  Providence  of  nature,  through 
these  organic  ties  of  the  social  bond,  has  decreed 
that  those  outstretched  hands  shall  be  held. 

And,  if  the  hindrance  and  pain  that  thus  cnsu>  I 
the  faithful  seem  hard,  this  fact  is  only  the  necessary 
reverse  of  the  larger  and  brighter  fact  that  the  true 
and  the  strong  are  to  give  of  their  strength  to  the 
weak,  and  lead  them  along  to  the  final  blessing  of 
all.  Once,  on  a  Western  railroad,  I  saw  a  rapid 
passenger  train,  to  which,  for  some  temporary  cause, 
a  mixed  train  of  emigrant  and  freight  cars  had  been 
attached.  There,  in  the  advance,  were  the  elegant 
palace  cars,  with  their  refined  and  comfortable  com- 
pany of  wealthy  travellers  ;  then  came  a  car  or  two 
of  more  ordinary  pattern  for  the  less  luxuriously  in- 
clined ;  and  then  the  miserable  emigrant  cars,  with 
their  freight  of  lowliness,  poverty,  and  not  a  little 
squalor  ;  while  a  number  of  dingy  coal-cars  brought 
up  the  rear.  Yet  all  were  running  together  on  the 
same  track,  drawn  by  the  same  powerful  engine, 
bound  for  the  same  goal.  So  it  is  with  mankind 
in  the  great  world-journey  that  we  are  making.  All 
classes,  grades,  and  conditions  of  society  are  fas- 
tened  together   in  one  train,  only  with  this  differ- 


MUTUAL    SOCIAL    RESPONSIBILITY  223 

ence  :  that  the  coupling  here  is  no  accidental  and 
transient  circumstance,  but  is  so  insured  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  eternal  laws  that  no  part  of  the  mixed 
train  of  humanity  can  ever  be  dissevered  and  left  be- 
hind. And,  if  any  of  these  life-travellers,  complain- 
ing of  the  delays  and  accidents  of  the  journey,  shall 
presume  to  ask:  "Why  should  my  course  be  hin- 
dered and  disturbed  ?  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper  ?  " 
the  reply  comes  back  from  the  providential  purpose 
inherent  in  the  eternal  order  of  things,  "Yes,  O 
man,  whosoever  thou  art,  thou  art  thy  brother's 
keeper;  and  wheresoever  on  this  earth  thou  stand- 
est,  and  however  proudly  thou  standest  in  thy  power 
or  in  thy  knowledge  or  in  thy  virtue,  unless  thou 
acknowledgest  that  primal  obligation,  the  voice  of 
thy  brother's  blood  crieth  against  thee  from  the 
ground." 

May  3,  1874. 


XVI. 
HEART    IN    NATURE. 

"  I  look  for  the  new  Teacher,  that  shall  see  the  world  to  be  the 
mirror  of  the  soul,  shall  see  the  identity  of  the  law  of  gravitation  with 
purity  of  heart;  and  shall  show  that  the  Ought,  that  Dutv, 
thing  with  Science,  with  Beauty,  and  with  Joy." —  K.  W.  I. mi  RSON. 

A  Chinese  priest  of  philosophical  temperament, 
who  lived  in  the  sixteenth  centurv,  in  discussing 
the  old  and  ever  new  problem  of  the  creation  of  the 
world,  represented  the  beginning  of  things  as  a 
crude,  chaotic  mass  of  nebulous  matter,  which, 
through  a  principle  of  self-generation,  gradually  ex- 
panded into  the  countless  beautiful  varieties  of 
nature  and  into  an  infinite  system  of  worlds  ;  but 
all  these  forms  of  nature  and  this  whole  infinite 
series  of  worlds  he  described  as  being  included 
within  one  universally  diffused  and  all-pervading, 
ethereal  essence  which  he  said  was  hard  to  name, 
but  which  might  best  be  called  "Heart."  This 
man  was  a  believer  in  the  Buddhist  religion ;  a 
religion  which,  more  than  any  other  perhaps,  has 
perceived  and  emphasized  the  evils  of  human  exist- 
ence, and  which  has  been  characterized  by  some 
theological  critics  —  critics,  however,  who  have  little 
appreciated  the  depth  of  its  thought  or  the  prac- 
tical benignity  of  its  mission  —  as  the  organization 


HEART    IN    NATURE  225 

of  human  despair.  And  yet  this  man,  confronting 
this  traditional  picture  of  the  lot  of  mankind  which 
was  the  common  property  of  his  religious  faith, 
and  confronting  the  actual  miseries  of  the  men  and 
women  in  the  populous  communities  around  him, 
could  not  complete  his  conception  of  the  creative 
and  sustaining  forces  of  the  universe  without  adding 
something  which  he  could  express  only  by  using  a 
word  that  covers  the  tenderest  facts  and  relations  of 
human  life.  Face  to  face  with  the  whole  vast  cata- 
logue of  human  woes,  face  to  face  with  his  beliefs 
as  to  the  necessary  and  inherent  evil  attending  all 
finite  existence,  he  yet  could  say  that  the  universe 
had  a  heart,  and  that  this  quality  of  heart  was  the 
subtile  essence  or  spirit  of  the  whole,  embracing,  sur- 
rounding, intimately  pervading  all  the  parts. 

This  attitude  of  the  Chinese  philosopher  is  not 
exceptional.  It  represents  the  Common  attitude  of 
humanity  in  the  presence  of  humanity's  ills  ;  and 
it  is  for  this  reason  that  I  bring  it  here  to  indicate 
the  subject  of  my  discourse  this  morning, —  Heart  in 
Nature.  Has  the  universe  in  the  midst  of  its  laws 
and  forces  any  heart  ?  This  is  a  question  which 
many  individual  minds  are  asking  of  themselves 
openly  or  silently  to-day.  It  is  a  question  which 
humanity  has  hitherto  answered  in  the  affirmative. 
Whatever  speculative  theologians  may  have  said, 
whatever  doubts  may  have  been  raised  by  philos- 
ophy or  by  science,  and  however  sceptical  individual 
observers  may  have  grown  as  they  have  watched 
the  stern  and  often  afflicting  processes  of  nature, 
humanity  as  a  whole,  and  through  all  the  varying 


i  \\  1.NTV1  III 

lis  of  its  history,  has  said  confidently  and  said 

emphatically:  "The  universe  has  a  heart  Some- 
where within  it,  in  spite  of  all  existing  evils  and 
woes,  are  the  elements  of  tenderness,  of  compassion, 

ii  1 1  will,  of  love." 
And  I  know  of  no  more  pathetic  picture  in  human 
history  than  the  persistency  with  which  this  belief 
in  the  good   intentions  of  the  universe   has  asserted 
itsell"   against  all   the  pri  LCtS  "l"  evil  to  which 

man  has  been  subject.  See  by  what  ills  human 
beings  have  been  buffeted  !  They  have  Ik  en  assailed 
by  floods,  by  storms,  by  pestilence,  by  famine,  by 
earthquake,    by    destructive    insects    and    venomous 

ts,  by  every  type  of  disease,  by  every  form 
and  hue  of  suffering.  They  have  been  assailed  in 
respect  to  their  possessions,  their  lives,  their  affec- 
tions, their  dearest  hopes  and  endeavors.  They 
have  won  their  achievements  by  a  dire  struggle 
against  conflicting  and  opposing  forces  :  nay,  only 
by  constant  and  bitter  struggle  have  they  main- 
tained existence  itself.  They  seem,  indeed,  to  have 
been  brought  into  existence  just  to  contend  for  life 
and  its  possessions  amid  the  rough  and  clashing 
forces  of  nature,  which  travel  on  their  ways  irre- 
spective of  human  desires,  and  deaf  and  pitiless  to 
human  entreaties.  For  more  than  half  of  mankind, 
the  struggle  is  terminated  by  death  before  even  the 
period  of  manhood  is  reached  ;  and  over  life  at  every 
age  death  ever  hovers  threatening,  sparing  no  house- 
hold, no  heart.  Yet  surrounded  by  this  host  of  nat- 
ural and  inevitable  evils,  and  amid  numerous  others 
of   personal  wrong  and  wretchedness,  arising   from 


HEART    IX    NATURE  227 

man's  weakness  or  inability  to  cope  successfully 
with  the  conditions  of  his  existence,  human  nature 
has  persisted  in  believing  that  all  these  ills  are 
encompassed,  penetrated,  and  overruled  by  elements 
of  sympathy  and  goodness.  Though  again  and 
again  hope  and  desire  may  be  disappointed,  and 
again  and  again  the  cry  for  mercy  find  no  answer, 
and  though  the  inquiry  that  searches  in  the  dark  for 
the  clew  to  the  beneficent  purpose  continues  to  be 
baffled,  yet  the  persistent  faith  remains  that  some- 
where that  purpose  clearly  runs,  to  bring  in  some 
way  fruition  to  all  good  hopes  and  desires.  Even 
when  man's  heart  has  been  wounded,  he  has  pressed 
the  gaping  wound  against  the  force  that  has  aimed 
the  blow,  in  mute  appeals  for  sympathy,  and  has 
continued  to  comfort  himself  with  the  belief  that 
behind  the  hand  that  struck  was  a  heart  that  felt. 
My  own  wounded  heart,  he  says,  bleeding  and  suf- 
fering, bears  witness  to  Heart  within  the  universe. 
Examples  of  the  persistency  of  this  belief  in  the 
goodness  of  the  universe  press  upon  us  from  all 
sides.  The  Hebrews,  in  their  captivity  in  Babylon, 
suffering  persecution,  and  almost  despairing  of  res- 
toration to  their  country  and  to  the  ancient  purity  of 
their  faith,  could  yet  sing  of  the  "loving-kindness" 
and  the  "tender  mercies"  of  Jehovah.  Year  after 
year  was  their  hope  deferred,  until  their  heart  was 
made  sick.  Their  God  did  not  lead  them  out  of 
their  bondage,  and  yet  they  steadfastly  believed  that 
he  would  ;  and  no  postponement  of  the  grand  event 
could  shake  their  confidence  in  his  promise.  The 
early  Christians  were  in  poverty  and  distress.     They 


228  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

were    despised    and    maltreated,    and    could    reckon 
little  success  for  their  cause  ;  yet  they  talked  of  the 
near  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  called 
God  their  father.     Their  kingdom  of  heaven  did  not 
come;  no  God,  the  Father,  descended  to  dwell  among 
them  on  a  renovated  earth  ;  no  Christ  reappeared  in 
the   clouds   to  bring    them    deliverance.       Yet    they 
continued  to  believe  and  to  hope.     The  beliefs  and 
hopes   changed  their  forms  to  suit  successive  dis- 
appointments, but  the  substance  of  them  remained. 
If  the  good  was   not  to  be  found  here  and  now,  it 
was  to  be  found  in  heaven  and  hereafter.     The  hope 
of   it  was  good  against  all  failures  as  to  time  and 
place.      The  Asiatic  Buddhists  regarded  life   in  all 
finite  forms  as  necessarily  evil ;  yet  never  was  there 
a  more  vigorous  or  more  humane  faith  in  the  exist- 
ence of  an  ultimate  good  to  be  attained  by  human 
endeavor  than  these  same  Buddhists  possessed.    Over 
against  the  fact  of  finite  ill,  they  placed  the  fact  of 
infinite    felicity,    when    the    finite    and    the    Infinite 
should  become  reconciled  and  be  at  peace.     Epicte- 
tUs  —  and  he  may  be  taken  as  a  type  of  the  Greek 
and   Roman    moralists  —  had    suffered    slavery,   was 
infirm  and  poor,  knew  little  of  life's  outward  joys, 
and   possessed    few   of   what    are    ordinarily   called 
the  bounties  and   blessings  of   heaven.      Yet  could 
he  say  to  his  God:  "Whatever  post  or  rank  Thou 
shalt  assign  me,  I  will  die  a  thousand  times  rather 
than  desert  it.  ...  If  Thou  shalt  send  me  where  I 
cannot  live  conformably  to  nature,  I  will  not  depart 
unbidden,  but  upon  a  recall,  as  it  were  sounded  by 
Thee.     Even  then,  I  do  not  desert  Thee.  .  .  .  Though 


HEART    IN    NATURE  229 

Zeus  set  me  before  mankind  poor,  powerless,  sick ; 
banish  me,  lead  me  to  prison, —  shall  I  think  that  he 
hates  me?     Heaven  forbid!  .  .  .  Nor  that  he  neglects 
me,  for  he  neglects  not  one  of  the  smallest  things ; 
but  to  exercise  me  and  to  make  use  of    me  as   a 
witness  to  others."      Was    there  ever  a  finer  ideal 
interpretation  of  evil  facts  ?     Our  old  German  ances- 
tors believed  in  a  perpetual  conflict   between  good 
and  evil  powers,  not  only  on  this  earth,  but  extend- 
ing throughout  the  universe  and  beyond  the  veil  of 
death  ;  yet  their  hearts  cherished  the  vision  of  the 
final  victory  of  good  over  evil,  and  of  a  new  earth 
that  should  be  the  fair  abode  of  virtue  and  peace. 
The  Persians  and  other  nations  who  have  believed  in 
a  dualistic  division  of   the  powers  of   the  universe 
into  divine  and  satanic  have  clung  to  the  same  hope 
in  the  ultimate  supremacy  of  the  principle  of  good- 
ness.    Even  the  Christian  sects  that  have  believed 
in  the  eternal  perdition  of   the  incorrigibly  wicked 
have  never  put  Satan  on  the  supreme  throne  of  the 
universe,  and  have  deftly  explained  their  dogma  of 
eternal    perdition    as   a   manifestation,   not    of    the 
wrath,  not  of  the  vengeance,  but  of  the  exceeding 
righteousness  of  God.     None  more  than  they,  even 
with  that  dreadful  belief  in  a  bottomless  pit  of  tor- 
ments   opening   at   their   feet,   have   been   wont   to 
praise  the  mercy  of  the  Almighty.     And,  however 
shocking  this  belief  might  be  to  our  sense  of  justice, 
there  was,  on  another  side,  something  sublime  in  it, 
when    it  rose  to  the  height  of   a  willingness  to  be 
forever  damned  so  only  God's  ineffable  justice  and 
glory  could  be  maintained.     Here  was  the  spirit  of 


23O  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

old  Epictetus  again :  "  I  will  never  forsake  Thee, 
never  cease  to  believe  in  Thee  and  in  Thy  goodness, 
even  though  Thou  sendest  me  far  from  Thee  into 
exile  and  suffering."  "Though  Thou  slay  me,  yet 
will  I  trust  Thee." 

People  who  are  even  far  lower  in  the  scale  of  civili- 
zation than  any  I  have  thus  far  named,  people  barbar- 
ous and  degraded  and  idolatrous,  people  that  seem 
almost  helpless  amid  the  forces  of  nature  and  are  on 
the  plane  of  fetichism  in  religion, — even  such  peo- 
ple, however  crushed  they  may  seem  under  nature's 
inexorable  sway  and  play  of  forces,  yet  manifest  a 
faith  that,  against  all  appearances,  there  is  a  power 
in  nature  that  is  protective  and  benign.  They  be- 
lieve it  is  there,  if  they  can  only  reach  it  !  And  so 
by  supplications,  sacrifices,  and  gifts  they  hope  to 
coax  it  out  into  light  and  activity, —  turning  to  it 
after  every  disappointment  and  after  every  new  blow 
from  nature's  malignant  powers,  with  a  faith  that  is 
doomed  again  probably  to  disappointment,  and  yet 
is  so  pathetically  superior  to  all  surface-evidence,  to 
the  facts  of  experience  even,  that  it  looks  right  away 
from  these,  though  pressing  so  close  upon  it,  and 
reaches  out  wistfully  and  still  believingly  for  that 
which  is  "the  substance  of  things  hoped  for  and  the 
evidence  of  things  not  seen." 

Thus,  everywhere  and  in  all  conditions  has  man 
asserted  his  belief  in  the  essential  goodness  of  the 
universe.  He  has  kissed  the  rods  that  have  scourged 
him,  in  faith  that  they  would  blossom  into  blessings. 
He  has  met  every  kind  of  misfortune ;  and  yet  he 
has  believed  that  the  ruling  powers  meant  to  be  kind, 


HEART    IN    NATURE  23 1 

and  would  bring  him  good  fortune  at  last.  He  has 
prayed  for  help  in  life's  emergencies  ;  and,  though 
the  help  he  asked  for  has  not  been  given,  he  never- 
theless continues  to  pray,  and  to  believe  that  the 
help  would  be  sent,  if  it  were  best  that  it  should  be. 
He  has  put  up  his  appeal  for  mercy  ;  and,  though  the 
mercy  has  been  delayed  or  has  not  come  at  all,  he 
affirms  his  trust  in  it  still,  generously  believing  that 
it  has  been  withheld  for  good  reason.  He  has  seen 
communities  swept  away  by  flood  or  earthquake  or 
pestilence,  and  devout  people,  in  all  the  agony  of 
despair,  on  bended  knees,  beseeching  heaven  that 
the  peril  might  be  averted.  The  peril  was  not 
averted,  the  suffering  and  the  destruction  came ; 
and  yet  the  afflicted  and  desolated  survivors  have 
not  ceased  to  believe  in  the  over-governing  Goodness, 
—  not  ceased  to  believe  in  its  pity  or  its  power,  nor 
to  put  up  their  prayers  for  its  aid.  He  has  seen  the 
great  fact  of  death,  present  everywhere  on  earth, 
among  all  nations,  through  all  ages,  from  the  begin- 
ning of  human  existence,  mingling  its  shadows  with 
the  fact  of  life,  breaking  up  at  some  time  every 
home,  desolating  at  some  time  every  heart.  He  has 
seen  human  beings  shrink  and  crouch  before  the 
coming  terror  with  eager  supplications  that  it  be 
stayed.  But  it  cannot  be  stayed.  It  is  part  of  the 
universe  of  things,  part  of  the  drama  of  existence. 
But  do  they,  therefore,  say  the  universe  has  no  pity, 
no  heart  ?  Rather  does  this  fact  of  death  seem  to 
have  touched  springs  of  tenderness  as  no  other  fact 
in  human  experience  has  done.  It  has  drawn  people 
together  in  common  sympathy,  and  driven  man  to 


232  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

rely  on  an  infinite  Love  that  shall  flow  into  every 
vacancy  where  the  fair  form  of  a  human  love  has 
been  removed. 

Whence,  then,  this  apparent  solecism  in  human 
experience?  —  these  hard  facts  of  ill  and  the  unan- 
swered desires  and  prayers  that  go  with  them  ?  these 
hard  facts  of  calamity,  of  struggle,  of  suffering,  frus- 
trating the  highest  aims  and  wishes  of  human  hearts, 
while  human  hearts,  through  all,  cling  with  unfalter- 
ing faith  to  a  Power  in  the  universe  greater  than  our 
hearts,  and  still  believed  to  be  inspired  with  tender- 
ness and  compassion  ? 

The  solution  of  this  problem  that  depends  upon 
the  recognition  of  a  miraculous  revelation  of  Divine 
Goodness,  overbalancing  all  possible  forms  of  evil, 
I  leave  aside.  The  religious  faith  that  rests  on 
miracle  has  little  standing-room  in  modern  days. 
The  miracle  presents  to  the  inquirer  a  greater  obsta- 
cle than  the  faith  itself.  Nor  shall  we  find  the  solu- 
tion completely  in  outward,  material  nature, —  at 
least  not  in  outward  nature  considered  by  itself. 
The  old  arguments  of  natural  theology  to  prove  the 
benevolence  of  the  creating  Deity  from  the  objects 
and  operations  of  nature  have  very  much  less  force 
than  they  once  had.  Modern  science  allows  little  to 
the  argument  from  design.  The  great  phrase  of 
modern  science  to  express  the  history  of  nature  is 
"struggle  for  existence,  with  survival  of  the  fittest"  ; 
and,  to  fit  this  formula,  the  argument  from  design 
must  be  stated  entirely  anew.  The  "design"  is 
now  seen  to  be  general,  not  specific, —  a  broad,  gen- 
eral drift  and  purpose,  inclusive  of  broad  and  general 


HEART    IN    NATURE  233 

results,  and  not  the  personal  adaptation  of  force  for 
the  working  out  of  this  or  that  special  end.  And 
against  nature,  on  any  hypothesis,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  marshal  the  facts  in  the  light  of  modern  science, 
so  that  they  shall  seem  anything  but  evidence  of 
benevolence.  John  Stuart  Mill  in  his  essays  on 
Religion,  posthumously  published,  brings  against 
nature  a  most  formidable  indictment.  He  says : 
"  Next  to  the  greatness  of  these  cosmic  forces,  the 
quality  which  most  forcibly  strikes  every  one  who 
does  not  avert  his  eyes  from  it  is  their  perfect  and 
absolute  recklessness.  They  go  straight  to  their 
end,  without  regarding  what  or  whom  they  crush  on 
the  road. ...  In  sober  truth,  nearly  all  the  things 
which  men  are  hanged  or  imprisoned  for*  doing  to 
one  another  are  nature's  performances  every  day. 
Killing,  the  most  criminal  act  recognized  by  human 
laws,  nature  does  once  to  every  being  that  lives  ; 
and,  in  a  large  proportion  of  cases,  after  protracted 
tortures  such  as  only  the  greatest  monsters  whom  we 
read  of  ever  purposely  inflicted  on  their  living  fellow- 
creatures.  .  .  .  Nature  impales  men,  breaks  them  as 
if  on  the  wheel,  casts  them  to  be  devoured  by  wild 
beasts,  burns  them  to  death,  crushes  them  with 
stones  like  the  first  Christian  martyr,  starves  them 
with  hunger,  freezes  them  with  cold,  poisons  them 
by  the  quick  or  slow  venom  of  her  exhalations,  and 
has  a  hundred  of  other  hideous  deaths  in  reserve, 
such  as  the  ingenious  cruelty  of  a  Nabis  or  a  Domi- 
tian  never  surpassed.  .  .  .  She  mows  down  those  on 
whose  existence  hangs  the  well-being  of  a  whole 
people,  perhaps  the  prospects  of  the  human  race  for 


234  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

generations  to  come,  with  as  little  compunction  as 
those  whose  death  is  a  relief  to  themselves  or  a 
blessing  to  others.  ...  A  single  hurricane  destroys 
the  hopes  of  a  season  ;  a  flight  of  locusts  or  an  in- 
undation desolates  a  district ;  a  trifling  chemical 
change  in  an  edible  root  starves  a  million  of  people. 
The  waves  of  the  sea,  like  banditti,  seize  and  appro- 
priate the  wealth  of  the  rich  and  the  little  all  of  the 
poor,  with  the  same  accompaniments  of  stripping, 
wounding,  and  killing  as  their  human  antitypes. 
Everything,  in  short,  which  the  worst  men  commit 
either  against  life  or  property  is  perpetrated  on 
a  larger  scale  by  natural  agents." 

We  hold  our  breath  at  this  bold  and  eloquent 
indictment,  while  we  ask,  Where  is  the  Heart  in 
such  facts  ?  And  the  worst  of  it  is,  all  of  the 
alleged  facts,  taken  by  themselves,  we  must  admit 
to  be  true.  But  this  is  literally  and  exactly  the 
worst  of  it :  that  the  facts,  taken  by  themselves,  are 
true.  But  this  is  worse  than  the  case  of  actual 
nature ;  for  there  such  facts  do  not  stand  by  them- 
selves, but  are  everywhere  mingled  with  facts 
brighter  and  better.  Such  marshalling  of  the  evil 
facts  of  nature  may  be  legitimate  in  argument 
against  the  old  school  of  theologians,  who  culled 
the  good  facts  to  prove  benevolent  design  ;  but  it 
gives  no  truer  picture  of  nature  than  did  the  more 
amiable  theologians.  The  scientific  truth  lies  some- 
where between  the  two.  Nature  does  not  show 
herself  all  heart,  but  she  shows  at  least  the  germs 
of  heart.  We  find  in  her  no  complete  system  of 
benevolence,  and  benevolence  only  ;  but  we  find  her 


HEART    IN    NATURE  235 

forces  moving  toward  benevolence,  and  benevolence 
all  along  mingling  in  their  operations.  Nature  man- 
ifests, besides  Mr.  Mill's  dark  list  of  evil  facts,  facts 
of  felicity,  of  delight,  of  satisfaction,  of  sunshine, 
growth,  and  blossoming,  facts  of  successful  fruition, 
of  harmony,  beauty,  and  gladness.  And  wherever 
exist  gladness,  beauty,  harmony,  healthful  growth, 
successful  achievement,  and  happiness,  there  must 
exist  in  the  heart  of  them  some  elements  of  goodness. 
Moreover,  the  history  of  nature,  traced  in  the  grad- 
ually unfolding  activity  of  the  vast  cosmic  forces 
which  seem  so  reckless  and  which  are  so  inexorable 
to  human  entreaty,  presents  proofs  that,  amid  all 
conflicts,  struggles,  and  retrograding  periods,  there 
is  a  steady  tendency  and  aim  toward  good ;  and 
whence  this  tendency  and  aim  but  froVn  the  fact 
that  the  element  of  heart,  or  of  goodness  as  well  as 
intelligence,  is  inherently  mixed  in  the  very  sub- 
stance and  essence  of  things  from  the  beginning? 
But,  more  than  this,  nature  —  outward,  material 
nature  —  does  not  show. 

Whence,  then,  we  have  to  ask  again,  does  man  get 
his  faith,  not  merely  in  an  element  of  heart  min- 
gling its  threads  with  the  dark  facts  of  human  woe, 
but  in  a  whole  heart,  all-comprehending  and  all- 
pervading, —  in  a  goodness  stronger  than  all  the 
powers  of  evil,  shining  above  all  shadows,  and  infus- 
ing into  all  forms  of  decay,  destruction,  and  death 
the  mightier  forces  of  life  ? 

Whence  does  man  get  this  faith  in  universal  heart 
but  from  his  own  heart,  from  the  human  heart? 
The  testimony  from   nature  must  be  supplemented 


236  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

with  the  testimony  from  man,  when  we  ask  the 
question,  What  does  the  universe  teach  ?  Outward, 
material  nature  is  only  a  part,  and  not  the  highest 
part,  of  universal  nature.  In  a  large  sense  and  in 
a  strictly  scientific  sense,  nature  includes  man.  The 
cosmic  forces  have  evolved  him  no  less  than  the 
earth  upon  which  he  dwells  and  the  plants  and  ani- 
mals that  help  to  sustain  his  existence.  He  is  the 
culmination  and  crown  of  nature.  Nature's  tenden- 
cies and  aims  complete  themselves  in  him.  Her 
meanings  in  him  stand  revealed.  By  his  own  heart, 
man  discovers  that  nature  has  a  heart, —  a  heart  that 
must  be  at  least  as  large  as  his  own,  as  large  as  the 
heart  of  all  humanity, —  nay,  as  large  as  the  heart  of 
all  possible  finite  races  of  beings  in  all  worlds. 
There  can  be  nothing  in  the  parts  which  is  not  in 
the  whole,  nothing  in  the  heart  of  man  which  is 
not  in  the  heart  of  Universal  Nature.  And  so,  when 
man  reckons  up  the  affections,  the  sympathies,  the 
pities,  the  tendernesses,  the  charities,  the  loves,  the 
philanthropies,  all  the  emotions  which  make  up  that 
moral  organ  and  function  of  his  being  which  is  called 
the  Heart,  he  justly  credits  them  all  to  the  aim  of 
Universal  Nature.  Because  he  finds  them  in  himself, 
he  knows  that  they  must  have  been  in  the  womb  of 
nature  before  him,  and  must  belong  to  that  power 
which  is  the  living  essence  and  soul  of  nature,  in-soul 
and  over-soul  of  the  world, —  which  escapes  all  analy- 
sis, all  search,  hovers  always  just  beyond  our  finding 
out,  but  which  we  know  must  carry  in  itself  the 
promise  and  potentiality  of  all  that  is. 

In  fine,  on  the  principle  that  whatever  is  in  the 


HEART    IN    NATURE  237 

effect  must  be  potentially  in  the  cause,  that  what- 
ever is   in   the  stream  must  be   somewhere  in   the 
fountains  and  sources  whence  the  stream  has  come, 
it  is  by  looking  into  his  own  heart  that  man  attains 
and  maintains  his  faith  that   there  is   heart  among 
the   forces,    powers,    and    movements    of    Universal 
Nature.     If  there  is  heart  here,  there  must  be  heart 
out  there,  and  everywhere  where  life  is.     The  col- 
ored sibyl,  Sojourner  Truth,  put  the  whole  logic  of 
this  thought  into  her  simple,  quaint  prayer  as  she 
escaped   from   bondage :    "  O  God,  help    me !     If    I 
were  you,  I  would  help  any  one  in  distress."     Man 
finds  tenderness  within.     So  he  says  and  believes  it 
must  also  be  without,  in  the  life  of   the  universe. 
Has   he   compassion   for  weakness,  sympathies   for 
distresses  and  sorrows,  pity  for  human  frailties  and 
sins  ?     Then  he  knows  there  must  be  founts  of  pity, 
sympathy,   compassion,  in    that   life-power,   whence 
stream  these  qualities  of  mercy  into  and  through  his 
nature.     Has  he  the  spirit  'of  helpfulness,  generosity, 
charity,  toward  misfortune  ?     Then,  by  that  token,  he 
knows  there  must  be  a  helpful  activity  in  nature, 
which  is  working  for  his  welfare  and  that  of  all  man- 
kind.    Does  he  find  human  sympathy,  when  it  is  at 
its   best,   patient,   unwearying,   inexhaustible,   going 
out  on  errands  of  healing  to  all  places  of  need,  and 
going  at  the  cost  of  self-denial  and  self-renunciation, 
that  it  may  carry,  if  possible,  redemption  and  com- 
fort ?     Then,  behold,  he   says,  a  higher   than  mere 
human   love   that   is    pouring    itself    through   these 
channels  of  philanthropy.     Does  he  know  something 
of  the  watchful  love  of  human  fatherhood  and  moth- 


-j< 


TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 


erhood  ?  Whence  comes  it,  he  says,  but  from  the 
fact  that  there  are  fatherly  and  motherly  attributes 
in  the  essence  of  infinite  Life  ? 

It  is  clear,  then,  why  the  Hebrews  in  their  cap- 
tivity, why  the  early  Christians  in  their  distresses, 
why  the  Buddhists  in  their  keen  sense  of  the  evils 
of  existence,  why  our  Teutonic  forefathers  in  their 
beliefs  in  a  deathly  struggle  between  good  and  evil 
powers,  why  Epictetus  and  the  Stoics  in  their  face- 
to-face  conflict  with  life's  ills,  why  barbarian  tribes, 
even  when  seemingly  crushed  as  helpless  victims 
under  the  reckless  blows  of  nature's  forces,  why 
people  everywhere  and  in  all  times,  under  the  bur- 
den of  the  manifold  ills  that  flesh  is  heir  to,  have 
yet  looked  up  out  of  the  ills,  out  of  their  distresses, 
and  from  beneath  the  weight  of  their  burdens,  and 
have  caught  glimpses,  or  freer  vision,  of  a  Power 
able  and  willing  to  protect  and  to  save  from  them 
all,  and  have  sung  in  faith  of  his  loving-kindness  and 
tender  mercies,  and  have  clung  to  him  in  trust, 
even  when  scourgings  came  instead  of  the  hoped-for 
bounties,  and  have  believed,  in  spite  of  all,  in  a 
coming  felicity,  virtue,  and  peace.  The  faith,  the 
vision,  the  trust,  the  song,  have  come  from  the 
Divine  Heart  within  their  human  hearts. 

And  man's  own  effort  to  cherish  the  vision,  and 
his  faith  and  joy  in  following  it,  help  to  make  the 
vision  real.  By  faithful  adherence  to  the  unseen 
ideal,  man  gradually  translates  it  into  visible  and 
tangible  certainty.  By  his  intelligence,  he  catches 
the  clew  to  nature's  intention,  and  by  his  skill  can 
mitigate  and  even  prevent  many  of  the  dire  results 


HEART    IN    NATURE  239 

of  her  blind  activity.  Man  lends  to  nature  eyes  that 
she  may  see  her  goal,  and  in  his  thought  and  heart 
her  own  ideal  aim  is  completed  and  fulfilled. 

"  Life  loveth  life  and  good :  then  trust 
What  most  the  spirit  would,  it  must ; 
Deep  wishes,  in  the  heart  that  be, 
Are  blossoms  of  Necessity. 

"  A  thread  of  Law  runs  through  thy  prayer, 
Stronger  than  iron  cables  are; 
And  Love  and  Longing  toward  her  goal 
Are  pilots  sweet  to  guide  the  Soul." 

November  28,  1875. 


XVII. 

WAITING   FOR    ONE'S    SELF. 

is  a  long  time  that  I  have  been  wait:: 

So  saip  a  Persian  poet  of  the  tenth  century,  and 
the  sentence  comes  down  to  us  freighted  with  the 

pathos  of  human  disappointments  and  human  ho 
Like  all  true  poets,   the   writer  spoke   not   so   much 
for    his    own    personal    feeii  for    a    sentiment 

common  to  human  souls.     Or,  speaking  for  himself, 

spoke  also  for  thousands  of  other  souls,  ol 
own  and  every  time,  and  indicated  an  experi. 
which  has  lost  none  of  the  keenness  of  e  by 

the  lapse  of  the  centuries  since  he  wrote.  His 
words  do  not  fail  to  touch  responsive  chords  of 
mutual  understanding  as  they  greet  our  ears  to-day. 
Some  of  us,  doubtless,  will  find  a  deeper  meaning  in 
them  than  others  do  ;  but  to  no  one  of  us  can  they 
be,  I  think,  without  significance.  They  will  recall 
to  us,  from  our  own  experience  or  observation,  pict- 
ures of  successive  disappointments  and  failures,  of 
a  good  aimed  at  just  lost,  of  procrastinating  pur- 
poses, of  self-reproaches  and  self-dissatisfaction  verg- 
ing toward  despair,  and  yet  companion  pictures, 
also,  of  a  patient  and  persistent  self-confidence, 
hope,  and    courage,  a  pathetic    trust    still    in    often 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  24I 

broken  resolutions  and  defeated  purposes,  which  are 
ever  returning  to  the  field  of  defeat,  and  are  finally 
more  than  a  match  for  all  failures  and  despair.     An 
anecdote  is  told  of  General  Grant  at  the  important 
battle    of    Pittsburg   Landing,  to   this   effect.     The 
first  day  was  very  disastrous  to  the  national  army. 
General  (then  Colonel)  McPherson,  Grant's  chief  of 
staff,  had  been  reporting  all  day  one  calamity  aftet 
another  ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  day,  in  summing  up 
the  condition  of  things  to  the  commanding  general, 
—  how   our   troops    had    been    driven    back   several 
miles  from  the  positions  occupied  in  the    morning, 
and  our  lines  were  everywhere  broken  and  in  confu- 
sion, and  two-thirds  of  our  artillery  and  great  num- 
bers of  our  infantry  had  been  captured,  ancj  our  dead 
and  wounded  were  left  on  the  field  in  the  hands  of 
the  enemy, —  McPherson  could  not  conceal  his  impa- 
tience at  his  chief's  undisturbed  serenity,  expecting 
some  orders   for  saving  the  rest  of  the  army  by  a 
prudent  retreat ;  and,  as  he  turned  away  from  the 
unbroken  silence,  he  threw  back  the  excited  question, 
"  And  what  do  you  propose  to  do  about  it,  sir  ?  "     "  I 
propose  to  re-form  my  lines,  and  attack  the  enemy 
at  daybreak ;  and  will  he  not  be  astonished  to  find 
us    doing  it?"  was  General  Grant's   answer.     And 
that  night  the  lines  were  re-formed.     At  daybreak, 
the  attack  was  made  ;  and  the  enemy  was  astonished. 
Our  troops  went  forward  to  triumph,  and  not  only 
regained  all  that  had  been  lost  the  previous  day,  but 
won  one  of  the  most  important  victories  of  the  war. 
There  are  many  experiences  in  our  human  lives 
of  which  this  anecdote  may  serve  as  a  rough  illus- 


242  TWENTY-FIVE   SERMONS 

tration, —  experiences  of  waiting  through  long  sea- 
sons of  discouraging  disappointment,  failure,  and 
loss,  until,  by  some  happy  combination  of  personal 
power  and  circumstances,  the  higher  self  is  evol 
and  takes  the  leadership,  and  the  long-desired  and 
long-sought-for  object  is  gained.  We  often  have 
to  wait  a  very  long  time  for  ourselves  ;  but,  if  we 
patiently  wait  and  faithfully  wait,  and  keep  our  trust 
and  hope  in  the  coming  and  do  well  our  own  part 
toward  the  coming,  the  trusted  self  will  surely 
come  at  last. 

The  poet's  doctrine,  we  may  observe  at  first, 
points  to  an  encumbered  and  divided  self, —  to  a  self 
that  is  compelled  to  wait  and  to  a  self  that  is  waited 
for;  to  a  self,  therefore,  that  can  be  hindered,  be- 
wildered, burdened,  fettered,  drawn  away  from  its 
true  aim,  drawn  down  from  the  higher  light  that 
reveals  its  possible  pathway,  and  to  a  self  that  is 
able  to  surmount  all  obstacles,  thread  successfully 
bewildering  thickets,  cast  off  burdens  or  grow  the 
stronger  and  more  erect  for  bearing  them,  break 
confining  fetters,  conquer  all  temptations,  and  in 
time  reach  the  height  of  personal  attainment  the 
shining  glory  of  which,  however  far  off  and  long 
waited  for,  no  cloud  of  discouragement  has  ever  I 
dense  enough  wholly  to  hide.  We  may  say,  indeed, 
it  is  one  self,  but  with  two  dominant  impulses  or  at- 
tractions,—  a  higher  and  a  lower,  an  upward  and 
a  downward,  a  spiritual  and  a  carnal,  a  mental  and 
a  material ;  one  self,  but  two  centres  of  variant 
forces  acting  upon  it  and  determining  its  orbit. 
Yet  it  is  significant  that,  though  man,  so  long  as  he 


WAITING    FOR    ONE  S    SELF  243 

has  had  a  history,  seems  to  have  been  cognizant  of 
this  duality  of  tendency  in  his  own  nature,  he  has 
yet  been  nearly  unanimous  in  calling  that  part  of  his 
nature  which  is  responsive  to  the  higher  attraction 
—  that  part  of  his  nature  which  subordinates  mate- 
rial appetite  and  passion  to  a  mental  aim  and  law  — 
his  real  and  true  self.  The  other  part, —  the  seat  of 
temptation,  hindrance,  and  failure,  the  source  of 
scores  of  besetting  sins  that  becloud  his  vision  and 
drag  back  with  such  fatal  energy  upon  his  steps, — 
though  he  has  been  miserably  conscious  of  its  suprem- 
acy in  his  actual  experience,  he  has  yet,  in  char- 
acterizing his  own  nature,  proudly  put  under  his  feet, 
and  said,  "Not  this  which  holds  me  down  to  earth, 
but  that  toward  which  I  lift  my  eyes,  is  my  real 
self."  It  is  there,  in  the  best  conception,  of  self  of 
which  any  individual  man  is  capable,  and  not  in  the 
poorest  and  lowest,  that  he  places  his  goal.  There  is 
his  aim,  his  standard,  the  enthronement  of  the  law 
he  owns  as  binding  upon  his  conduct,  the  hope  of 
what  he  means  to  be, —  and  there  he  confidently 
waits  his  own  coming ;  waits,  though  the  iron  of 
some  bitter  present  experience  may  be  pressing  into 
his  soul ;  waits,  perhaps,  through  years  of  weariness 
and  hope  deferred,  through  many  wanderings  in  by- 
paths of  illusions,  through  many  stumblings  and 
fallings  and  blinding  storms,  yet  waits  still  in  faith- 
ful expectancy. 

And  this  is  essentially  the  same  doctrine  that  the 
Apostle  Paul  teaches  in  those  strong  and  memorable 
passages  where  he  depicts  the  inner  conflict  between 
the  two  forces, —  the  force  of  good  and  the  force  of 


244  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

evil.  Though  he  finds  "the  evil"  always  "present 
with  him,"  so  that  even  "the  good  that  he  would,  he 
does  not,  but  the  evil  that  he  would  not,  that  he 
does,"  yet  he  takes  the  high  ground  that  this  evil 
bias  and  impulse  make  no  part  of  his  true  self. 
<l  I  delight,"  he  says,  "in  the  law  of  God  after  the 
inward  man  ;  but  I  see  another  law  in  my  members, 
warring  against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me 
into  captivity  to  the  law  of  sin  which  is  in  my  mem- 
bers. ...  So  then  with  the  mind  I  myself  serve  the 
law  of  God,  but  with  the  flesh  the  law  of  sin." 
And  hence  the  great  apostle,  though  the  conflict 
was  by  no  means  over,  though  many  harassed  years 
were  still  before  him,  though  disappointments  and 
obstacles  were  still  to  be  met  and  conquered,  yet 
seemed  not  to  count  nor  to  see  any  of  these  things, 
but  to  look  right  through  and  beyond  them  to  the 
time  when  he  could  cry,  "  I  have  fought  a  good 
fight,  I  have  finished  my  course,  I  have  kept  the 
faith  :  henceforth  there  is  laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of 
righteousness."  And  this  Paul,  singing  this  song  of 
triumph  at  the  goal  reached,  was  the  real  Paul.  He 
felt  all  the  possibilities  of  achievement  alive  and 
throbbing  in  his  being  while  yet  he  was  toiling  on 
the  way.  And  so  the  song  kept  singing  itself  by 
anticipation  in  his  heart,  when  he  was  down  in  the 
valleys,  and  under  the  clouds,  and  within  prison 
walls.  At  the  end  of  the  long,  devious,  burdensome 
way,  the  battles  over  between  the  two  laws, —  the 
law  of  his  mind  and  the  law  of  the  flesh, —  he  sees 
himself  waiting  for  himself  in  triumph,  here  a 
struggling  soldier  on  the  field,  there  a  conqueror 
crowned. 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  245 

The  same  kind  of  experience  manifests  itself  in 
various  ways  in  the  manifold  phases  of  human  life. 
All  faithful  toilers  for  truth  know  what  it  is  to  wait 
long  for  the  realization  of  their  highest  thought. 
Truth  does  not  flash  upon  the  world  full  mid-day  at 
once ;  but  it  comes  by  slow  gradation  of  light,  build- 
ing itself  up  ray  by  ray,  like  the  glory  of  a  sun- 
rise upon  the  gradually  displaced  darkness.  How 
long  the  great  discoverers  and  inventors,  the  great 
scholars,  poets,  artists,  have  had  to  wait  and  toil, 
and  toil  and  wait  again  at  their  tasks,  before  they 
have  been  able  to  reap  the  fruit  of  their  toil !  At 
first  there  comes  to  them  a  little  gleam  of  light, — 
an  idea,  a  thought,  a  kind  of  vision  of  some  truth, — 
which  at  first  may  be  very  slight,  and  yet,  impinges 
upon  the  mind  with  an  intensity  that  so  startles  and 
holds  attention  that  it  will  not  move  from  its  lodge- 
ment in  the  brain.  By  its  very  insistence,  it  creates 
belief  in  its  genuineness, —  as  if  it  must  needs  be 
that  what  so  urgently  claims  the  recognition  of  an 
observing  mind  should  be  a  part  of  the  actual  forces 
and  relations  that  make  the  universe  what  it  is. 
Thus,  such  an  idea,  thought,  or  vision  of  a  truth 
becomes  a  part  of  the  mental  life  of  the  person  to 
whom  it  has  come, —  something  to  be  cherished,  culti- 
vated, followed.  It  becomes  grafted  upon  the  nature 
like  a  new  self,  and  yet  may  be  only  a  natural  un- 
folding of  the  old  self ;  and,  if  it  be  large  and  grand 
enough,  it  will  draw  all  the  faculties  and  gifts  of  its 
possessor  to  its  service,  and  shape  for  him  a  career 
and  make  a  destiny.  Yet  there  is  hardly  one  who 
leaps  to  that  destiny  at  a  bound,  or  travels  to  the 


24^  TWENTY-]  [VE    SERMONS 

goal  of  a  career  without  severe  toil  and   many  dis 
pointments  on  the  way.     Even  if  truth  has  flashed 
upon  some  minds  in  an  instant,  it  may  have  required 
long  and  arduous  effort  to  find  an  adequate  expres- 
sion  for  revealing  it   clearly  to  the  world.      Kepler 
seized  in  a  sudden  flash  of  thought  the  law  of  the 
planetary   orbits,    but   had    to   wait    years    before   he 
could  work  out  a  mathematical  demonstration  of  it. 
The  example  of  the  men  who  make  the  great  dis- 
coveries   in    the    sciences    and  arts  furnishes  many 
moral    and    religious    lessons.     If  we    seek    illustra- 
tions of  enthusiasm,  faith,  persistency,  patient  labor, 
disinterested     love    of    truth,     heroic    conquest    of 
obstacles,  splendid  constancy  to  an  ideal,  we  cannot 
find    better    specimens    than    are    presented  in  this 
class  of  men.     Here,  we  find  many  of  the  men  who 
are  the  most  trusting  and  patient  waiters  for  self; 
men  who  believe    so  thoroughly  in  a  thought    that 
has   come   to  them  or  a  beneficent  fact   they  have 
discovered,  and   in  their  power  ultimately  to  make 
such    thought  or   fact    popularly  accepted,  that    no 
difficulties  can  daunt  them  nor  ridicule   discoui 
nor  opposition  terrify.     They  may  have  to  wait  long, 
but  they  wait  in  faith  that  their  claim  shall  yet  be 
vindicated.     When    Columbus    found    America,    he 
found  the  self  he  had  long  waited  for  at  the  same 
time.     Bernard  Palissy  gave  his  whole  life  for  six- 
teen years  to  the  discovery  of  the  decorative  enam- 
elling that  made  his  name  illustrious.     In  spite  of 
cost,  hardship,  repeated  failure,  scoffing  from  unbe- 
lievers,   he    toiled    on.     He    reduced    himself    and 
family  to  poverty,  came  almost  to  the  last  crust  of 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  247 

bread,  and  finally  had  to  tear  up  the  floor  of  his 
cottage  to  get  fuel  for  his  all-devouring  furnace. 
But  this  last  desperate  step  of  sacrifice  was  the  one 
that  brought  him  to  his  expected  discovery  and  to 
his  long  waiting  self.  So  every  ardent  toiler  for 
truth,  believing  in  the  reality  of  the  truth  sought  as 
thoroughly  as  he  believes  in  his  own  existence, 
comes  so  to  identify  truth  with  his  own  existence 
that,  when  he  cries  with  Archimedes,  "  I  have  found 
it !  I  have  found  it !  "  he  might  also  cry,  "  I  have 
found  myself." 

For  the  same  thing  may  be  said,  substantially,  of 
those  whose  interests  and  labors  are  directed  more 
particularly  to  other  spheres  of  truth, —  philosophi- 
cal, aesthetic,  moral,  and  religious.     Imm^nucl  Kant 
was   nearly    sixty   years    old    before    he    wrote    the 
famous    book,  the    Critique  of  Pure   Reason,  which 
gave  such  a  powerful  stimulus  to  thought  and  made 
a  new  era  in  the  world  of  philosophy.     For  eleven 
years    he    was    writing    and    rewriting    that    work, 
hardly  knowing  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  time 
where  he  was  coming  out  or  at  what  he  was  aiming, 
but    pressed    by   a   dissatisfaction  with    all  existing 
philosophical    systems    and    feeling    within    him    a 
power   to    clear  a  way  through    their   labyrinth    of 
errors,  if  he  could  only  succeed  in  faithfully  unfold- 
ing and  following  that  clew  of    thought  which  had 
vaguely  but  deeply  impressed  itself   upon    his  con- 
sciousness as  holding  the  mystery.     And  so  through 
all    these    years    he    studied    and    worked    at    this 
thought,    wrote   and   rewrote    it,    went    round    and 
through  it  and  into  all  its  consequences,  and   thus 


TWENTY-FH 

felt    his  way  slowly  and   patiently  along,  but   < 

more  confidently  and   dearly,  until    I  w  Philos- 

ophy  stood  in  his  mind  and  before  the  world  in  all 

its   logical   completeness,   symmetry,  ami   strength. 
Nor,    previous     to    this     time,    had     he     shown 
marked    metaphysical    ability,  but  only,  as  it   v. 
the    germ,  struggling    to  unfold    into    the   light  but 
never  quite  succeeding,  of  metaphysical  aspiration. 
He     had     tried     theology,    preaching,    the    physical 

QCes,  mathematics,  lecture  1   in   his  university 
anthropology,  the   theoi  natural 

i  oivsical  geography,  and  various  other  themes,  show- 

the  versatility  of  his  mind  and  the  bre 
his   knowledge,  and   i  in   preaching,  where    he 

failed,   meeting   with   a   reasonable   and   constantly 

ring  success;  yet.  in  all  this  work  and  through 
all   these  which  was   his  deepest  thoi 

and    yearning  was  not  Iced   hardly 

touched,  and  he  did    not   show  himself   for  the  gi 
man  lie  was.      He   had   not   yet   found   his  real   self. 
For  that  supreme  hour  he  waited  —  waited  at  h 
work  and  small   pay,  never  going  in  all  his  1 
than    forty  miles    away  from   his  native  town — for 
nearly  sixty  years  ;  waited  till  the  yearning  within 
him    grew  into  a  passion,  and    the    passion    cleared 
the  way  for  thought,  and  the  thought  clothed  itself 
in    masterly  forms  of   logic    and  went    forth  to  the 
world  in  books, —  in    books    that  revolutionized  the 
philosophical  thinking  of  Germany  and  will  live  in 
the  mental  life  of  mankind  till  the  latest  time.     He 
waited  long ;  but  the  deep,  trustworthy,  genuine  self 
came  at  last. 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  249 

Men  of  a  different  stamp  of  mind  — poets,  painters, 
sculptors,  musical  composers  — are  quite    generally 
thought   to  do  their  work  and  to  rise  to  their  full 
measure  of  greatness  by  a  sudden  influx  of  power, 
by   inspiration;    and    this    is    sometimes    the    case. 
Yet  how  often  the  moment  of  inspiration  may  have 
to  be  long  waited  for  !     The  soul  that  is  gifted  with 
artistic  genius  has  many  a  dream  before  the  thoughts 
that  aspire  and  burn  within  are  able  to  shape  them- 
selves into  solid  artistic  form.     Not  till  the  moment 
comes  when  the  conditions  of   the   sensitive    inner 
organism   and    the   conditions    of   outward    circum- 
stance are  both  attuned  in  rhythmic  unity  with  the 
striving  creative  spirit  within  is  that  spirit  able  to 
manifest  itself  in  the  reality  of  art.     And  this  is  a 
moment  that  may  be  long  deferred,— a  moment  that 
does  not  occur  in  every  hour  nor  even  in  every  year, 
and  that  to  some  souls  of  even  the  finest  gifts  only 
comes  in  perfection  once,  twice,  or  thrice  perhaps 
in    a   lifetime.     Such   souls,-  therefore,   though    con- 
scious of  the  artist's  power  within  them,  may  have 
to  wait  through  long,  arid,  and  laborious  years  for 
the  hour  when  the  inner  chaos  of  aspiration,  impulse, 
and    thought   can    shape    itself   cosmically   into   "a 
thing  of   beauty."     Milton    proved    himself  to  have 
a  poet's  genius  in  his  early  years,  and  even  then  had 
thoughts  of   some    high    epic    theme  which    should 
fully  test  his  strength.     But  the  civil  commotions, 
the   revolutions    and  wars   in  England,  intervened  ; 
and  for  twenty  years   he  was  forced  "to  lay  aside 
his    singing    robes,"  and    appear   as  a  champion  of 
human  liberty  in    political  and  social  polemics  and 


25O  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

in  practical  offices  for  the  State.  He,  too,  was 
almost  sixty  years  old  before  he  found  the  poetic  self 
so  long  waited  for.  Not  till  after  many  bitter  expe- 
riences of  calamity  and  pain,  of  political  revolution 
and  counter-revolution,  of  disappointment  and  blight 
to  his  affections,  of  assiduous  and  heroic  labors  in 
a  hopeless  cause, —  not  till  after  he  had  lived  to  see 
the  political  principles  he  had  so  openly  and  bravely 
espoused  thoroughly  defeated  and  rcpu  Mated  in  Eng- 
land, and  he  himself  was  pursued  with  obloquy  and 
no  public  service  was  permitted  him,  and  blindness 
had  closed  his  vision  to  all  outward  light, —  not  till 
then  did  the  inward  poetic  vision  of  his  earlier  years 
come  back  and  shape  itself  into  the  poem  that  has 
given  him  an  immortality  of  fame.  Michel  Angelo 
left,  perhaps,  at  death  more  unrivalled  products  of 
his  genius  than  any  other  artist  the  world  has 
known.  Yet  his  unfinished  works  were  more  than 
his  finished ;  and  some  of  the  former  show  concep- 
tions with  which  his  mind  had  labored  and  which 
had  come  to  him,  doubtless,  in  the  highest  moments 
of  his  thought,  but  which  his  hand  had  not  found 
itself  adequate  to  put  into  color  or  stone.  Magnifi- 
cent as  were  his  achievements  and  crowded  with 
labor  as  was  his  long  life,  death  found  him  at  eighty- 
eight  with  a  power  still  within  him  seemingly  con- 
scious that  it  had  not  yet  fully  uttered  itself  and 
must  wait  for  more  facile  organs  for  executing  its 
behests. 

Or  look  at  a  very  different  kind  of  career, —  at  the 
life  of  any  of  the  great  religious  teachers  and  reform- 
ers ;  at  that  of  Jesus,  for  instance,  as  most  familiar 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  25 1 

to  us.     It  is  evident  that  we  have  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment but  a  small  part  of  the  real  biography  of  Jesus. 
We  have  a  sketch  —  somewhat  confused,  and  mixed, 
without  doubt,  to  a  considerable  extent  with  legend, 
but  more  or  less  authentic  — of  the  two  or  three  years 
that  constituted  the  public  part  of  his  life.     Of  all 
the  thirty  years  that  preceded  the  brief  time  of  his 
public  mission,   we  have  only  the  fewest    possible 
hints.     But  these  hints  indicate  what  we  might  nat- 
urally suppose  would  have  been  the  case  :  that  Jesus 
did  not  step  at  once,  by  the  light  of  a  sudden  out- 
burst of  revelation,  upon  his  great  public  career,  but 
that  through  many  years  the  thought,  the  summons, 
had  been  lying  hidden  in  his  mind  and  he  had  been 
brooding  upon  it,— in  the  closet,  at  his.  carpenter's 
bench,  in  the  synagogue,  and  by  his  mother's  side  at 
home.     It  was  there,   in  his  young  soul,  when   the 
boy  drew  apart  from  his  father  and  mother  and  went 
back  to  ask  questions  of  the  rabbis  in  the  temple. 
It  was  there, —  this  brooding  question  of  his  destiny, 
this  haunting  vision  of  what  he  might  become  and 
do  for  the  good  of  his  people,  this  consciousness  of 
a  possible  spiritual  messiahship  which  might  in  his 
person  fulfil  the  expectations  and   yearnings  of  his 
race) — it  was  there  when  he  went  to  be  taught  of 
John  the  Baptist  and  to  be  baptized  by  him ;  there, 
too,  when  he  went  into  the  desert,  apart  from  all 
human  kind,  after  the  manner  of  a  hermit, —  for  self- 
communion,  for  it  was  the  impulse  that  drove  him 
thither  ;    and  it  was  there  through  all   the   doubts, 
darkness,  and  tempting  suggestions  of  that  season 
of  solitude,  confidently  abiding  its  time  and  awaiting 


252  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

its  triumph.  It  was  not  till  after  all  these  years  of 
waiting,  these  trials  and  self-searchings,  that  even 
Jesus  found  himself  and  his  mission. 

Now,  the  lives  of  these  great  workers  —  these 
prophets,  seers,  artists,  sages,  who  make  so  large  a 
part  of  human  history  —  only  present  in  larger  and 
finer  picture,  in  more  effective  grouping  and  richer 
beauty,  elements  of  mental  and  moral  life  which  are 
to  some  degree  the  possession  of  all  of  us.  There 
is  one  law  of  growth,  of  progress,  of  accomplishment 
and  power,  that  runs  through  the  whole  family  of  man- 
kind. "  First  the  blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full 
corn  in  the  ear," — that  is  the  law  for  man  as  well  as 
nature.  And  between  the  time  when  the  blade  first 
appears,  a  little  streak  of  living  green,  above  the 
ground,  and  the  time  when  the  full  sheaves,  ripened, 
are  borne  home,  there  may  be  long  seasons  of 
drouth  or  wet,  of  burning  heat  or  killing  frost,  when 
the  powers  of  life  are  tested  to  the  utmost,  and  even 
hope  is  only  kept  alive  bv  faith  in  the  great  law 
which  brings  seed-time  and  harvest  in  their  order 
and  never  fails.  Whether  a  man  possess  one  talent 
or  ten,  the  law  for  use  and  increase  is  the  same. 
There  is  the  same  slow  process  of  unfolding,  the 
same  liableness  to  disappointed  hopes,  the  same  sub- 
jection to  hindering  conditions,  the  same  waiting 
expectancy  that  the  heart's  deepest  and  most  conse- 
crated purpose  shall  yet  emerge  from  all  impedi- 
ments, free  and  triumphant.  We  may  even  say  that 
the  highest  thought  or  purpose  of  the  universe  itself 
did  not  reveal  itself  at  once  full-grown  and  full  fruit, 
but  ripened  slowly.     When  we  see  through  what  in- 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  253 

calculably  long  processes  of  preparation  the  material 
world,  with  its  vast  variety  of  creatures,  was  passing, 
to  make  ready  for  the  advent  of  man  on  this  planet, — 
by  what  a  devious  pathway  of  struggle,  of  tentative 
efforts,  of  conflicts  of  force  against  force,  nature 
passed  before  rtian  emerged  as  the  consummate  prod- 
uct of  the  whole, —  we  may  say  indeed,  and  say  it 
with  all  reverence,  that  even  infinite  Being  waited 
long  for  himself ;  waited  long  and  wrought  patiently 
for  the  coming  of  a  finite  form  so  organized  that  his 
own  attributes  and  purpose  might  be  self-manifest 
therein. 

And  we  are  offspring  of  that  Being;  and  as  he 
worketh  and  waiteth  for  himself,  reacheth  not  his 
sublimest  forms  of  revelation  at  once,  but  weaveth 
by  degrees  the  garment  of  glory  by  which  he  is 
seen,  so  must  we  work  and  wait  for  the  highest  rev- 
elation of  ourselves, —  expecting  to  see  our  cherished 
hope  often  deferred,  but  never  to  see  it  conquered  ; 
doing  our  best  with  present  conditions  and  opportu- 
nities, but — or  therefore  we  might  rather  say — look- 
ing confidently  to  the  future  to  bring  us  to  some- 
thing better  than  any  past  or  present  has  ever 
afforded.  In  one  form  or  another,  it  is  the  destined 
lot  of  every  human  being  to  wait  for  himself.  Our 
duty  is  /iere;aX  the  post  of  present  responsibility,  of 
present  joy,  sorrow,  temptation,  or  trial ;  and  here, 
with  various  degrees  of  faithfulness  or  unfaithful- 
ness, we  are  doing  or  neglecting  to  do  the  require- 
ment of  the  hour.  But,  whether  doing  or  neglecting 
to  do,  there  is  no  one  of  us  whose  heart's  ideal  is 
not  yonder,  away  ahead  of  us,  awaiting  our  tardy 
coming. 


254  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMON'S 

The  waiting  ideal  perhaps  is  mental,  or  perhaps  it 
is  moral.  It  may  be  a  career  of  which  we  have  had 
some  youthful  vision,  but  which,  from  outward  cir- 
cumstance or  inward  infirmity  of  purpose,  we  have 
hitherto  failed  to  attain.  It  may  be  some  form  of 
unsatisfied  affections,  leaving  a  vacancy  and  a  yearn- 
ing not  yet  filled  in  the  heart.  It  may  be  some 
beckoning  path  of  philanthropy,  once  enchanting  our 
eyes,  but  not  yet  offering  the  looked-for  opportunity 
or  summoning  the  needed  self-consecration  which 
makes  opportunity.  Or  it  may  be  some  high  attain- 
ment of  character,  some  inward  self-conquest,  some 
decisive  triumph  over  a  strong  and  degrading  temp- 
tation,—  a  triumph  which  will  set  our  faculties  free 
for  the  good  service  of  which  we  are  conscious  they 
are  capable,  but  a  triumph  which  is  yet  delayed  by 
our  own  halting  purposes  and  treacherous  passions. 
In  whatever  form  the  waiting,  unattained  ideal  ap- 
pear, it  presents  the  same  pathos  of  contrast  between 
a  self  that  has  failed  and  a  self  that  still  hopes  ;  be- 
tween purposes,  visions,  and  aspirations  which  have 
hitherto  been  checked  and  frustrated  and  an  inner 
sanctuary  of  faith,  yearning,  and  courage  which  will 
not  yield  to  despair  nor  death,  but  which  look  across 
the  grave  of  every  worsted  and  down-stricken  reso- 
lution with  eyes  that  behold  another  self,  and  that 
the  real  self,  in  the  resurrection  robes  of  victory. 
Even  the  most  degraded  victim  of  vicious  courses 
does  not  lose  all  hope  in  a  better  fortune  to  come. 
He,  too,  has  moments  of  some  purer  aspiration  and 
thought, —  moments  when  down  into  his  darkness 
and  wretchedness  there  streams  a  ray  of  the  great 


WAITING    FOR    ONE'S    SELF  255 

Light  which  fills  the  heavens  and  overspreads  the 
world,  and  toward  which  he  can  but  lift  his  eyes  in 
earnest  longing.  In  that  moment,  "  he  comes  to 
himself  "  ;  and,  in  coming  to  himself,  he  turns  again 
toward  father  and  mother  and  home.  In  the  very 
act  of  lifting  his  eyes  to  the  Light,  he  greets  his 
better  self,  and  in  the  radiance  of  that  upper  glory 
sees  himself  as  he  yet  may  be. 

So  with  us  all.  Whatever  may  be  our  lot,  what- 
ever the  form  of  our  longed-for  ideal,  whatever 
hindrances  and  delays  may  beset  our  course,  and 
however  long  and  burdensome  may  still  seem  the 
unfinished  way  before  us,  if  we  are  but  faithful  to 
present  light,  to  to-day's  opportunity  and  duty, 
there  is  a  better  self  waiting  for  us  in  triumph  at 
the  end.  In  that  which  waits  there  is.  a  Divinity 
that  appeals  invincibly  to  a  divine  purpose  and  hope 
in  that  which  is  waited  for,  and  there  is  no  power 
in  the  universe  that  can  prevent  the  coming 
together  of  this  cause  and  this  consequence.  The 
waiting  may  be  long,  the  earthly  pilgrimage  may 
not  end  it ;  but  by  and  by,  if  not  on  earth,  then  in 
some  celestial  morning,  the  soul  may  wake  to  a 
surprise  of  felicity,—  perhaps  not  that  dreamed  of, 
but  something  greater  and  better  than  that,  like  a 
clear,  calm  sunrise  after  a  starless  and  tempestuous 
night. 

December  10,  1876. 


XVIII. 
THE   SILENT    REVELATION. 

"  Does  heaven  speak  ?  The  four  seasons  pursue  their  courses, 
and  all  things  are  being  continually  produced ;  bat  does  heaven  say 
anything?"  — Confucius. 

"  They  have  no  speech  nor  language,  and  their  voice  is  not  heard ; 
yet  their  line  is  gone  out  through  all  the  earth,  and  their  words  to 
the  end  of  the  world."—  Hebrew  Psalm. 

These  fine  words,  in  their  different  ways,  from 
Hebrew  and  Chinese  Scripture,  utter  essentially  the 
same  thought,  the  Silentncss  of  Nature  s  Revelations  ; 
and  it  is  to  this  thought  and  its  lessons  that  I 
wish  to  call  attention  this  morning. 

Nature  is  ever  active,  ever  at  work,  ever  pro- 
ducing the  grandest  results  ;  yet  she  never  utters  a 
syllable  of  her  purpose,  never  whispers  in  advance 
her  intent  to  any  curious  ear.  In  silence  are  her 
tasks  achieved.  All  her  activities  have  a  profound 
significance,  yet  not  until  those  activities  have 
brought  forth  their  completed  results  is  their  mean- 
ing disclosed.  She  reveals  herself,  not  in  speech, 
but  in  deeds ;  tells  what  she  means  to  do  only 
by  what  she  has  done  ;  assures  us  by  the  character 
of  her  achievements,  not  by  the  eloquence  of  her 
promises.  True,  her  work  goes  on  not  in  absolute 
silence.     Sound  of   all    kinds  accompanies  it.     She 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION  257 

shouts,  she  sings,  she  sighs.  She  thunders  in  the 
tempest,  roars  and  moans  in  the  ocean,  whistles 
in  the  wind,  chirps  in  the  insect,  becomes  musical 
in  the  throat  of  the  bird  and  the  voice  of  man. 
She  shrieks  from  pain  and  makes  melody  for  joy. 
Yet  she  articulates  nothing.  She  is  dumb  and 
silent,  so  far  as  revealing  her  thought  and  purpose 
by  intelligible  language  is  concerned.  Though  her 
sound  has  gone  out  to  the  ends  of  the  world,  yet 
she  has  no  speech  nor  language,  and  her  voice  is 
not  heard.  The  sounds  are  incidents  of  her  work, 
but  not  conditions  of  revelation.  They  are  them- 
selves a  part  of  the  mystery  to  be  revealed,  and  are 
only  understood  when  the  whole  intent  is  made 
evident  in  the  finished  product.  The  inanimate 
forces  make  their  various  noise,  the  brutes  cry, 
man  speaks  ;  but  heaven  is  silent.  The  finite  forms 
of  earthly  force  utter  their  voice  as  if  striving  to 
phrase  their  meaning ;  but  heaven,  the  infinite 
Power,  says  nothing.  In  -silence  it  does  its  work, 
and  leaves  its  work  to  speak  for  itself. 

The  thing  done  is  Nature's  revelation,  and  its 
significance  is  disclosed  only  by  the  interpreting 
mind  that  has  observed  the  process.  The  morning 
stars  never  sang  together  to  reveal  the  harmonies 
of  their  movements  ;  but  the  song  came  from  the 
musical  soul  of  man,  who  watched  these  silent 
orbs  of  heaven  until  the  order  and  rhythm  of  their 
movements  were  translated  for  him  into  melody. 
The  seasons,  as  they  come  and  go,  say  nothing  of 
what  they  mean  to  do.  It  is  only  by  what  they 
have  done,  for  years  and  generations  and  ages  past, 


2^8  ■  i  N  1  IT-FIVE    SERMi 

that  we  know  what  is  in  their  heart  to  do  this 
coming  year.     Look  at   the   forces   which,    in  any 

year,  build  up  the  glory  of  the  summer.      Not  a  word 
do  they  utter  of   their   intent,  not  a   syllable  lisp  of 
the  mighty  things  they  mean   to  do.      The   invisible 
powers,  as  they  began  to  stir  around   us  again 
spring,  did    not  go  to  loudl;  ting:    "N    1 

what  -real  things  we  will  do!  We  will  carpet  the 
earth  through  all  these  northern  zones  with  green  ; 
we  will  dress  the  tre  robes;   we  will 

bring  flowers,  rich  with  all  hues,  to  plant  and  shrub; 
and  fruit  that  shall  follow  in  its  turn,  to  bless  man 
and  beast."     But  in  silence  and  md  little 

by  little,   the  minute,   unseen    forces    went  to  their 
work,  not  uttering  a  boast   or  a  word  of  what  they 
were    doing,    until    the    glory    and    the    beauty    were 
spread    all   around   us   in  a   living    revelation   to 
and   heart.      No   voice,    no    la  \    yet    has    their 

line,  indeed,  gone    out   to   all    the  earth.      Had  that 

,  the  first  time  that  any  human  eves  had  g 
on  such  a  phenomenon,  it  would  have  been  to  us 
a  miracle.  We  should  not  have  had  the  sligh 
idea  of  its  purport  or  intended  result,  and  in  vain 
should  we  have  pleaded  with  heaven  to  utter  any 
word  for  interpreting  the  meaning  of  the  miracle. 
Heaven  would  have  been  as  silent  as  the  forces 
themselves.  But,  though  no  miracle,  the  wonder 
of  the  phenomenon  is  none  the  less  ;  and  the  mean- 
ing of  it  has  been  revealed  only  by  the  silent 
faithfulness  of  the  forces  to  their  appointed  tasks 
through  many  generations  and  ages  of  human 
experience.     Only   by   what   again    and  again  they 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION  259 

have    done,    do    we    have  faith    in    what    they   are 
doing  and  will  do  at  any  present  season. 

Or   look   back  farther  into  Nature's  laboratories. 

When  the    heavens  were    forming   into  firmaments 

and  worlds  ;  when  the  chaotic  masses  of  vapor  were 

concentrating   into  fluids,  and  the  fluids  into  solids ; 

when  the   processes   were  going   on   by    which    life 

gradually   appeared    on    these    worlds,  and    the   life 

diverged    into    manifold    species,  and   these  species 

on  our  earth    prefigured   and  prepared  the  way  for 

man, —  through    all    the    vast    processes,    extending 

through  periods  of  time  which  no  mathematics  can 

compute  nor  imagination  grasp, —  Nature  uttered  no 

prophetic  voice  to  disclose  her  purpose.     Her  forces 

labored  in  silence  at  their  great  secret.  '  Could  any 

listening  ear  have  been  there,  it  would  have  detected 

not  the  faintest  whisper  of  her  meaning,     Not  from 

the  heaven  above  or  the  earth  beneath  was  anything 

said.      There   was  only   something   doing.      And  it 

was    not    until    the   thing  was   done,  not  until  man 

appeared,  and  not  until  he    had  been  on  the  earth 

a  hundred  thousand  years  or  more, —  not,  in  truth, 

until  this  century  in  which  we  are  living,  when  man 

has    turned  up  the  strata  of  the  earth  and  learned 

the   science  of    its  creation,  and  studied  the  forces 

of  the  heavens  through  his    telescope  and    the  life 

of  lands  and  seas  through  his  microscope, —  not  until 

now  has  it  been  discovered  that  these  silent  forces 

all  along  carried  the  secret  in  their   bosom.     They 

carried   the    secret,  but    did  not  tell  it.     All  along 

they  meant  something,  and  meant  probably  just  that 

which  has  come  to  pass.     But  they  did  not  tell  what 


260  TWENTY-FIVE    SI. KM 

they  meant    until  the  thing  appeared    to  speak  for 
itself. 

But  it  is   to  be  noted   next  that,  though    Nature 
has    no  voice   and    utters    no    articulate    prophecies 
concerning  her  intentions,  she  yet  does  disclose  her 
character,  does  reveal  herself.     As  has  already  been 
said,  she  reveals  herself  in  doing.     Silent,  she    yet 
speaks.     Could   we    suppose  ourselves    to  meet  her 
for  the  first  time,  to  our  bewildered  and  even  agon- 
izing  petitions    for    some  word    of   light   as    to  her 
future    relations  to  us,  she  would  be    dumb.     Only 
by  a  silent  gesture  would  she  bid  us  wait  and  see. 
But    knowing   her   as    we    do  by  our  own    familiar 
experience   of   her   actions,    and    by    the    aggregate 
inherited  experience  of  unnumbered  generations  of 
our   ancestors,    she    speaks  to    us    through    all  that 
gathered  knowledge.     All  her  past  actions,  so  dumb 
while    they   were    in    process   of   performance,   now 
have  tongues  that  speak  to  us  clearly  of  her  present 
intentions    and    her  future  results.     We   know  her, 
and  can  trust  her  almost  better  than  ourselves.     No 
life-long  friend,  beloved,  leaned    upon    at  our   side, 
is  more  thoroughly  known  or  a  surer  reliance.      Even 
the   dependence  on    impartial    parental    love    is  not 
more  sure  than  the  confidence  with  which  we  cling 
to    the    hand    of    our    silent    mother    Nature, —  the 
mother  who  never   spoke   one  word    of  promise  to 
our  ears,  but  whom  we  know  by  her  faithfulness  to 
all  the  generations  of  men.     Through  this  accumu- 
lating experience,  this  aggregate  knowledge  of   the 
human    race,    drawn    from    daily    life    with    her,    is 
Nature   revealed.     By  what    she  did  yesterday  and 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION  26l 

the  day  before,  and   through    all  the  yesterdays,  do 
we  read  her  intentions  for  to-day  and  to-morrow  and 
the  days  and  years  thereafter.     And,  thus  knowing 
her,  we  know  her  not  only  as  power,  but  as  power 
that  works  toward  order,  method,  harmony,  beauty, 
use.     We  know  that  her  forces  work  with  such  con- 
stancy and  with  such  regularity  of   tension    toward 
a  definite  result  that  we    call    her  operations   laws. 
To  them,  we  know  that  human  law  must  bend  and 
human  power  be  subservient.     And,  if  by  any  means 
any  of   her   methods  which   we   name  laws  can  be 
evaded  or  abrogated,  it  is  only  by  calling  into  ser-  g 
vice  some  other  of  her  forces  that  is  for  that  time 
and  place  superior,  or  setting  into  operation  another 
law.     Nothing  is  more  clearly  known  in  the  universe 
than  that  Nature  is  a  law-abiding  power,^- that  she 
is  moved  by  an    impulse  that    is    not    reckless,  not 
chance,  not  whim,  not  caprice,  but  an  impulse  that 
aims  in  a  definite  direction  and  for  a  definite  result. 
Whatever  apparent  exceptions  there  may  be,  human 
experience  has   yet    learned    that  her  aims  may  be 
trusted,  her  forces  confided  in.     The  whole  stability 
of  society  depends  upon  this  trust, —  that  what  Nat- 
ure has  been  and  done  she  will  continue  to  be  and 
do.     All  this  common  experience  teaches. 

But  science  shows  more.  Science  shows  that, 
along  with  this  law-abidingness,  this  constancy,  there 
is  an  order  that  means  progress,  advance,  unity  of 
plan,  unfoldment  of  purpose,  growth  into  ever  finer 
symmetry  of  proportion  and  beauty  of  form.  Deep 
within  the  beauty  which  all  eyes  see  there  is 
advance  to  a  higher  idea  of   beauty.     Deep  within 


T\\  INI  V-!   I\ 

the  movement  of  forces  which  all  minds  can  com- 
prehend there  is  the  harmonious  unfoldment 
vast  cosmic  plan  which  has  become  revealed  only 
to  the  eye  of  scientific  intelligence,  by  which  these 
forces  are  seen  t'>  It  self-improving  and  self-regen- 
erating forces :  so  that  Mature,  when  we  look  upon 
her  mighty  periods  of  activity,  has  hem  advarn 
upon  her  own  work,  making  the  bad  good  and  the 
better,  as  if  aimin  Thus,  though 

working  in  silence,  does  Nature  make  her  revela- 
tions and   win   our  trust. 

And  now  I  want  to  draw  into  BOme  simple  and 
brief  shape  some  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  lessons 
of  the  theme. 

The    first    lesson     that    would     naturally 
itself  lies  in  the  parallelism  which  might  be  drawn 
between   this   history   of    Nature   and  the  history  of 
the  human    race,  illustrating  how  the   great  human 
exhibitions    of    power,   how    the    gTi  lis    that 

have  actually  stood  in  history  for  the  revelation  of 
new    principles,   and    how    even    tho  hs    that 

have  been  called  special  eras  of  religious  revelation. 
have  rather  advanced  by  the  unseen  strength  of 
silently  operating  forces  than  by  any  sudden  inter- 
vention of  marvellous  power  from  the  heavens  or 
even  noisy  demonstration  of  human  speech.  Not 
until  the  epochs  have  come  and  actually  made  their 
mark  is  humanity  able  to  read  their  full  meaning. 

Jesus  and  his  disciples  little  thought,  I  suppose, 
what  was  in  the  bosom  of  that  one  idea  which  they 
preached  with  such  persistency,  "the  coming  of 
the  kingdom  of  God."     Their  business  was  to  plant 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION"  2D3 

the  idea.     But,  concerning    the  forces   by  which   it 
was    to    grow    and    spread    and    assimilate  to    itself 
other  ideas  and  unfold  from  itself  things  which  they 
never  dreamed  of  being  in  it,  they  had  no  responsi- 
bility nor  obligation.     The  speech  was  small,  consid- 
ering the  result   that  came,  and   does    not  account 
for  it.     The  important  sentences  of  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  can  be  found  piecemeal  in   the  sayings 
of    Hebrew  rabbis   before   Jesus.     The   doctrine  of 
love  to  God  and  Man  was   the  sum  and  substance 
of  the  Jewish  religion.     Jew  and  Persian  alike  had 
looked  for  a  Messiah.     Neo-Platonists  and  Platoniz- 
ing  Jews  were  inculcating  a  doctrine  of  the  Logos, 
or  Divine  Word,  seed  of  a  new  dogma  of  incarna- 
tion, the  development  of  which  had  such  a  mighty 
influence    in     shaping    Christian    theology.      Thus, 
silently,  in  many  directions  and  under  many  soils, 
were    the   seeds  of   the  new  era  germinating;    and 
the   era  had  come  and  passed    before   people   knew 
that  it  had  come  enough    to   name    and    to    reckon 
back   to   it.     The    new    revelation    was    rather    the 
regate  character  of  all  that  had  been  clone  than 
any   special    speech.     It   was    the   new  growth,  the 
new  life,  of   the    manifold    silent    forces    that   were 
operating  in  the  human  communities  that  made  up 
the   Roman   Empire  eighteen   and    nineteen    centu- 
ries ago. 

So,  again,  the  first  movers  in  the  Protestant 
Reformation  little  dreamed  of  all  that  their  acts 
meant.  It  is  hard,  indeed,  to  find  the  first  movers, 
so  inextinguishably  does  the  religious  movement 
shade  off  into  an  intellectual  and  political  one.     But 


TV.  BNTY-1  IVE    SERW 

not  even  did   Luther  and   his  brave 
see  all   that   was   to   come  from   their  doctrin* 
private  judgment  as  against  the  voice  ol  tin-  pi 
and  the  Church.     Perhaps  they  would  have  shrunk 
from   it,  if  they  had.      But   it  was   not  theirs   to   I 

nor  to  proclaim  the  result.      It  was  theirs  only 
duty   of    their  own    hour.      Within    their 
duty,  concealed   in  the  heart  of  their  deeds,  other 
forces  were  working  in  silence,  with  other  meaning 
and  for  greater  results.      With  the   I 
lation  of  the  meaning  of  the  Protestant  reform 
come;    but  this    revelation    could    not   be   made   not- 
understood  then.      It  was  not    even  outwardly  proph- 
■!,   though    Luther  and    his   helpers   were   of    the 
type  of   prophets.     The   genuine  prophet,  perl: 
never  knows  that  he  prophe  1'he  prophecy  is 

uttered  through  him  more    by  his    entire  char, 
and  attitude  than  by  his  spoken  message,  and  only 
when   the    fulfilment   of    it     :omes    is    its   meaning 
revealed.     Thus  it  was  also  in  the  birth  and  gr 
of  our  own  nation.     The  pr  that  finally  ulti- 

mated  in  a  national  consciousness  and  power  among 
the  American  colonies  were  of  long  duration,  and 
were  silently  operating  through  many  minds  that 
spoke  no  public  word  and  little  dreamed  whither 
they  were  tending.  Separation  from  Great  Britain 
was  a  thought  at  first  too  daring  to  be  broached. 

And  so,  in  general,  in  human  history  as  in  the 
history  of  Nature  :  it  is  by  the  faithfulness  of  the 
unseen  and  silent  forces  to  certain  appointed  tasks 
of  the  hour  that  the  great  advances  are  made,  and 
the   inner   meaning   of   the   forces    that    thus    work 


THE    SILENT    R!'.\  ELATION  265 

through  nature  and  through  man  is  revealed.  Not 
so  much  by  any  uttered  words  in  behalf  of  righteous- 
ness, though  spoken  never  so  eloquently  by  prophet 
or  martyr,  as  by  the  silent  grip  with  which  the 
masses  of  civilized  mankind  adhere  to  truth  and 
virtue,  is  the  stability  of  society  assured.  There  are 
principles  of  mental  and  moral  intelligence  which 
have  come  to  have  the  same  constancy  in  the  world 
of  mankind  as  the  laws  of  physical  force  in  the 
world  of  matter,  and  upon  which  we  rely  with  the 
same  security.  They  may  never  have  been  spoken 
from  the  heavens,  they  may  not  even  have  been 
intuitive  endowments  of  the  human  mind  when  man 
first  made  his  appearance  on  the  earth  ;  but,  as 
now  seems  most  likely,  they  may  have  been  gradu- 
ally and  slowly  evolved  through  the  various  disci- 
pline of  human  and  ante-human  experience,  and 
may  be  mingled  with  human  infirmity  and  error; 
yet  deeper  than  aught  else  in  man's  nature  they 
declare  the  purport  and  destiny  of  his  being.  They 
are  the  silent  witnesses,  which,  growing  clearer  and 
clearer  with  man's  historic  advance,  interpret  for 
him  all  other  revelations,  and 

"  Which,  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master  light  of  all  our  seeing." 

One  is  tempted  to  inculcate  as  another  lesson  of 
the  theme  more  reliance  on  the  silent  working  of 
moral  forces  in  the  amelioration  of  human  society. 
Certainly,  when  we  regard  the  incessant  speech- 
makin"-  that  is  going  on  among  men,  the  immeas- 


266  TWENTY-FIVE   SERMONS 

urable    quantity  of    words   that,  through   the    living 
voice  or  the  printed   page,  one  portion   of  mankind 
is    uttering    for    the    benefit    or    entertainment    of 
another  portion,  and  when    we    regard    the  tumult, 
tug,  and  tussle  of   it  all,  one  may  be   pardoned  if   he 
sometimes    longs    for    the     mythical     half-hour    of 
silence  that  is  said  to  have  occurred   in  heaven  at 
the  opening  of  creation's  drama.     And,  seriously,  i: 
may  be  asked  whether,  in  schemes  of  education  and 
of   social   reform   and    philanthropy,  we  are  not  in 
danger  of  relying  too  much   on  talk,  while  we  lose 
sisrht  of   the  silent  influence  of   character   and    the 
potency  of  quiet  deeds.      Whatever   may  be   said  of 
the  power  of  words  and  of  the  influence  exerted  by 
a  great  master  of  speech,   the  men  who  do   rather 
than    the   men  who   say  are   yet   humanity's  leaders. 
The    resolute    act    is    stronger    than    the    eloquent 
speech.     This,  of  course,  is    not   to  say  that  speech 
has  not  its   proper   place   and   service,  nor   that   any 
great  social  work  is  likely  to  be  clone  without  great 
and   earnest  words  being  somewhere  spoken   in  its 
behalf.     Much  less  is  it   to   inculcate  any  fatal   iist- 
lessness  to  calls  for  moral  and  philanthropic  service, 
and  a  passive   trust  that   the  work  will   somehow  be 
done  without    our    aid.     I    have   no   sympathy  with 
that    merely   dilettante    interest    in    reform    which 
professes  to  believe  that  things  will  somehow  come 
right  of   themselves,  while  human   beings    lie  back 
at   ease,  and   look   on.     Rather  is   it  to  appeal  for 
more  aid  by  acts  that  I  cast  suspicion  upon  the  easy 
mood  of  talk.     Talk  that  has  not  originated  in  silent 
thought,  and  will  not  bear  the  test  of  silent  thought, 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION  267 

is  worse  than  weak.  And  so  I  think  that  public 
talkers  (and  private,  too)  need  often  to  recur  to  silent 
meditation  to  recruit  their  strength.  If  some  of  us 
never  came  out  of  the  silence  with  public  discourse, 
the  world  might  be  no  loser.  But  in  the  silence  of 
private  meditation  have  the  great  thoughts  been 
born  that  have  moved  the  world.  A  master  speaker 
may  stir  a  listening  mind  to  some  heroic  resolution. 
But  the  heroic  resolution  that  is  made  under  the 
mastering  silence  of  a  noble  thought  that  has  taken 
possession  of  the  mind  is  more  likely  to  remain  as 
an  abiding  power  in  the  life.  "  While  I  was  mus- 
ing," says  the  Hebrew  Psalm,  "the  fire  burned." 
Meditation  no  less  than  speech  may  kindle  zeal, 
and  is  necessary  for  sustenance  to  moral  strength. 
Channing  once  said,  "There  is  no  eloquence  like 
the  deep  silence  of  a  crowd."  I  used  to  prize  the 
silence  of  the  Quaker  meeting  as  often  better  than 
the  speech  that  broke  it.  There  may  indeed  bz 
an  empty  silence  as  there  i-s  empty  speech  ;  but  the 
empty  silence,  at  least,  does  not  invade  others' 
rights,  as  the  inane  speaking  does.  Better  the 
empty  silence  than  the  hollow  words.  But  there 
is  a  silence  that  is  felt  like  an  inspiration.  It  is  th  • 
silence  that  is  alive  with  emotion  and  thought. 
Such  silence  is  vital  with  the  seeds  of  mighty 
actions.  It  holds  the  secrets  of  many  hearts,  which 
shall  one  day  be  revealed  in  deeds. 

But  I  must  hasten  on  to  speak  of  one  or  two 
other  lessons  which  may  come  closer  to  the  individ- 
ual experience  of  us  all.  It  is  the  lot  of  our  human- 
ity that  we  are,  not  infrequently,  cast  into  perplex- 


TWENTY-FIV] 

ing  and  painful  straits  of  life,  where  we  long  for  a 
word  of  revelation,  which  is  not  vouchsafed,  to  lead 

us  out  of   our    difficulties   and  show  us  our  future. 
We  often   say,  If  we  only  knew  whit    the   future   is 
to  bring  to  pass,  how  much  more  content  we  might 
be,  and  how  much  more  wisely  act  in  the  prea 
What,  we  anxiously  ask,  is  to  be  the 
our  taking  this  course  or  that?     What  is  to  be  the 
coming  career  of  our  children  and  of  others  we  lo 
The  young  themselves  are  often  troubled  with  anxi- 
eties about  their  future  course  in  life      If  they  only 
knew   what  they  are  best    fitted   for,  what   they  can 
best    succeed     in,    how    easy    would     seem     present 
duties!    To-day,  perhaps,  nothii  ms   to  open: 

what,  then,  will  it  be  to-morrow5  Sometimes  we 
may  be  watching  by  a  sick-bed,  or  watching  with 
painful  uncertainty  our  own  health.  Or,  harder 
still,  we  may  in  dread  suspense  be  watching  the 
uncertain  moral  steps  of  one  we  love  better  than  our 
own  life.  Oh,  if  we  only  knew!  we  say.  And 
sometimes  the  questions  so  press  upon  us  that  in 
our  helplessness  and  despair  we  are  tempted  to  cry 
out  for  the  heavens  to  be  opened  and  a  special 
revealing  message  to  be  sent  to  our  aid.  Hut  to  all 
these  entreaties  the  heavens  say  nothing.  To  all 
such  pleadings  there  only  comes  the  answer  of 
silence.  Is  heaven,  then,  dumb  ?  Does  it  deny  all 
revelation  ?  No  :  not  more  surely  does  its  shining 
canopy  of  blue  embrace  to-day  the  gladsome  earth 
and  nurse  its  waiting  life  than  it  broods  with  silent 
care  over  the  human  soul,  and  has  given  to  it  all  the 
revelation  that  it  needs.     It  is  a  fallacy  to  suppose 


THE    SILENT    REVELATION  269 

that  to  know  with  certainty  the  future  is  to  reveal 
present  duty.  For  our  duty  is  not  so  much  con- 
cerned with  consequences  as  with  motives.  Conse- 
quences may  depend  on  many  wills,  on  many  con- 
current forces  entirely  beyond  our  control.  But  our 
duty  concerns  our  present  act  alone.  Moreover,  to 
ask  to  know  our  future,  or  any  future  with  which 
we  have  concern,  is  to  ask  an  impossibility.  That 
future  is  to  depend  to  some  extent  upon  what  we 
do  at  this  present  time ;  and  it  rightly  so  depends, 
by  the  great  law  of  moral  responsibility.  And  to 
ask  that  we  may  know  the  future  so  as  to  determine 
present  action  by  it  is  to  reverse  this  primal  law  of 
human  development.  We  must  ourselves,  by  our 
present  faithfulness,  help  to  make  that  firture.  And 
it  is  seldom  that  the  duty  of  the  present  moment, 
the  duty  that  is  the  very  next  to  be  done,  is  not 
revealed.  The  necessary  revelation  has  been  vouch- 
safed in  the  silent  working- of  our  own  reason,  in  the 
light  of  conscience,  in  the  natural  influx  of  a  love 
that  binds  us  in  ties  of  sympathy  to  our  kind  and 
makes  us  both  strong  and  tender  toward  all  human 
wants.  In  the  faithful  activity  of  these  great  facul- 
ties,—  Reason,  Conscience,  disinterested  Love, — 
the  law  of  life  is  revealed.  And  if,  even  with  these 
silent  revealers  of  duty's  path,  the  present  opening 
for  that  path  may  seem  to  us  closed  and  we  see  not 
where  to  apply  our  hand;  if,  having  done  all  within 
our  power,  we  seem  to  be  called  only  to  the  post  of 
passive  submission  and  endurance, —  let  us  remem- 
ber still  that  "they  also  serve  who  only  stand  and 
wait." 


270  TWENTY-FIVE    51  Rid 

And  there  is  another  silent  waiting  imposed  upon 
us,  and  wisely,  by  the  necessary  conditions  of  our 

knowledge,  another  waiting  for  a  revelation  which 
is  made  only  in  silence  to  the  waiting  heart. —  the 
revelation  of  the  kind  of  life  that  is  to  be  after  this 
life  of  earth.  If  human  entreaties  from  the  time 
mankind  began  their  existence  could  have  brought  a 
disclosure  of  the  futurity  after  death,  all  the  mys- 
teries of  heaven  would  now  be  open  to  our  gaze. 
Hut  not  a  syllable  of  the  great  mystery  has  yet  been 
articulated  that  can  permanently  satisfy  or  that  is 
worthy  of  the  quest.  The  curtain  hangs  there, 
drawn  by  a  silent  hand  ;  and  it  hangs  there  wisely. 
Let  us  not  profane  its  sanctity  by  hands  that  with 
too  curious  eagerness  would  lift  it  aside.  Infinitely 
bitter  is  it  to  wait  in  the  quietude  of  a  patient  hope. 
Yet  is  there  no  revelation  made?  The  revelation  of 
all  future  life  is  silently  made  in  the  life  that  now  is, 
—  in  those  deep  qualities  of  life  that  draw  their  sus- 
tenance from  eternal  fountains,  and  so  proclaim  their 
own  immortality  ;  in  the  wisdom  and  goodness  which 
are  adequate  to  all  emergencies  of  our  earthly  life. 
and  which  we  may  trust  to  provide  what  is  worthiest 
and  best  for  the  life  hereafter. 

December  16,  1S77. 


XIX. 
THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY. 

"No  man  is  so  great  as  mankind." — Theodore  Parker. 

I  propose  to  speak  to  you  this  morning  on  the 
topic  suggested  by  the  phrase  "The  Religion  of 
Humanity."  It  is  a  phrase  that  has  come  into  use 
somewhat  in  these  latter  years  to  indicate  a  type  of 
religion  that  is  growing  up,  mainly,  outside  of  eccle- 
siastical lines  and  independent  of  the  'old  claims 
of  religious  authority.  In  the  history  of  religious 
thought,  the  phrase  was  first  adopted  by  the  French 
philosopher,  Auguste  Comte,  who  turned  it  to  a 
certain  philosophical  use,  to  signify,  in  his  hierarchy 
of  the  intellectual  and  social  sciences,  the  place 
and  service  of  religion.  In  his  system  of  positive 
knowledge,  or  of  science  as  based  only  on  phe- 
nomena and  their  generalized  laws,  theology  had  no 
place.  He  declared  that  theology  represented  the 
obsolete  and  obsolescent  child-mood  of  the  human 
mind  ;  that  it  grew  out  of  the  disposition  to  refer  to 
supernatural  agencies  things  which  the  human  under- 
standing could  not  account  for  by  natural  causes. 
But,  though  theology  was  not  recognized  by  Comte 
as  having  any  valid  basis,  and  though  he  believed 
in  no  Deity  as  a  first  cause,  nor  in  personal  immor- 


2^2  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMi 

tality,  nor  in  any  special  religious  revelation  as 
having  a  claim  to  authority  over  the  human  mind, 
yet  he  conceded  the  vast  power  and  service  of  the 
religious  sentiment;  and  upon  it,  newly  directed,  he 
mentally  constructed  and  endeavored  to  put  into 
practical  operation  a  new  system  of  religion,  with  a 
complete  cultus  and  all  the  officers  and  equipments 
of  an  organized  church.  He  called  religion  the 
crown  of  all   the  social  sciences,  the  goal  of  sociol- 

He  defined   it   as    "the   complete    harmoi; 
human   existence,    individual    and    collective,   or   the 
universal  unity  of  all  existence  in  01:     I  Being," 

whom  lu-  calls  Humanity.  Emancipated  from  the 
crude  primitive  forms  of  polytheistic  worship  and 
from  the  vague  metaphysical  conception  of  a  s;' 
Deity  in  the  skies,  the  religious  sentiment,  he 
claimed,  would  finally  ripen  into  the  personal  di 
lion  and  self-sacrifice  of  individual  being  for  the 
welfare  of  universal  humanity.  Hence  the  name, 
"Religion  of  Humanity."  which  the  stringent  dis- 
ciples of  Comte  still  use  as  a  title  for  their  special 
jous  beli 
In  this  usage,  however,  the  phrase  has  a  some- 
what technical,  if  not  sectarian  meaning.  It  must 
at  least  be  said  that  Comte's  plan  of  an  organized 
church,  however  revolutionary  his  ideas,  was  mod- 
elled too  closely  after  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
to  gain  much  headway  in  the  modern  world.  He 
adopted  very  much  of  the  old  ecclesiastical  machin- 
ery and  not  a  little  of  the  papal  idea  of  ecclesias- 
tical authority,  from  which  he  thought  the  com- 
mon people  were  not  ripe  for  release.     The  saints' 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  273 

days  and  festivals  he  changed  into  days  of  homage 
to  the  world's  great  religious  and  moral  teachers  of 
all  faiths, —  as  Moses,  Socrates,  Zoroaster,  Jesus, 
Mohammed,  etc.  He  even  projected  a  reform  of  the 
calendar,  so  as  to  name  the  months  and  days  of  the 
week  after  the  names  of  distinguished  benefactors  of 
the  human  race.  But,  with  all  his  wealth  of  learning 
and  his  wide  grasp  of  intellect,  Comte  apparently 
;loes  not  seem  to  have  perceived  that  the  people 
who  were  ready  for  emancipation  from  the  old  eccle- 
siastical authority,  the  people  who  were  prepared  to 
understand  and  welcome  his  revolutionary  thought, 
would  not  be  easily  marshalled  under  the  sway  of 
a  new  external  authority  in  matters  of  faith.  And 
so  his  grand  plan  of  a  new  church  remains  only  a 
model  —  on  paper.  He  made  the  mistake  of  think- 
ing that  a  religion,  instead  of  being  a  natural  growth, 
was  an  architectural  structure  to  lie  artificially  built. 

But  the  phrase  "Religion  of  Humanity"  is  s 
gestive  ;  and  it  suggests  something  more  important 
for  our  notice  than  the  French  philosopher's  elab- 
orate scheme  of  a  new  form  of  worship  and  a  new 
church.  It  suggests  certain  tendencies  and  forces 
in  modern  society,  certain  lines  and  methods  of 
thought,  certain  drifts  of  opinion  and  belief,  by 
which  old  religious  ideas  and  usages  are  being 
revolutionized,  and,  inside  of  churches  and  outside 
of  churches,  in  the  midst  of  dissolving  creeds  and 
worships,  an  essentially  new  form  of  religion  is 
growing  up.  And  it  is  chiefly  these  tendencies  and 
movements  that  I  have  in  mind  in  bringing  the 
subject    here.      They   are    observable    not    only   in 


274  TWENTY-FIVE    SERM 

Christendom,  but  in  other  religions, —  in  Judaism, 
in  Buddhism,  in  Brahmanism,  in  Mohammedanism, 
in  the  little  remnant  of  the  Parsee  faith  that  still 
survives.  In  every  religion  which  has  a  constitu- 
ency respectably  civilized  there  is  a  progressive 
,  a  section  that  feels  the  influence  of  modern 
ideas  and  is  astir  with  the  mental  and  moral  li; 
modern  times.  This  party,  which  is  following  the 
authority  of  reason  rather  than   that  of  old  eci 

al  faiths,  may  still  keep,  perhaps,  the  old  relig- 
ious names,  only  modifying  them,  it  may  be,  by  the 
prefix  liberal,  as  Liberal  Christian,  Liberal  Hebrew, 
Liberal  Mohammedan.  But  the  tendency,  wherever 
found,  is  in  the  same  direction  ;  the  movement,  what- 
ever its  starting-point,  is  toward  a  common  goal 
And,  when  the  movement  becomes  more  self-con- 
scious and  self-centred,  it  will  most  likely  find  some 
new  and  common  name  for  its  now  separate  branches. 
In  the  first  place,  the  phrase  "Religion  of  Hu- 
manity" suggests  an  antithesis  to  the  religion  of 
supernaturalism.  The  prevailing  idea  concerning 
religion  —  of  all  religion  commonly  regarded  as  true 
and  efficacious  —  is  that  it  is  of  supernatural  origin 
and  is  preserved  by  supernatural  agencies.  Its  light 
is  not  believed  to  be  the  light  of  the  common  human 
reason,  of  natural  conscience,  of  the  aspiring  human 
spirit,  but  a  light  miraculously  revealed  from  the 
heavens.  Its  first  promulgators  are  claimed  to  have 
been  specially  commissioned  by  the  Almighty  for 
their  work,  endowed  with  the  power  to  perform  mir- 
acles to  attest  their  authority.  Its  Bibles  were  writ- 
ten, it  is  alleged,  by  supernaturally  inspired    men. 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  275 

Its  doctrines  could  have  never  been  discovered  by 
the  unassisted  human  mind,  but  were  sent  into  the 
human  mind  directly  from  heaven.  Its  church  was 
nized  under  specific  divine  commands,  and  has 
been  directed  by  a  special  outpouring  of  the  divine 
Spirit  in  no  wise  natural  to  humanity.  The  kind  of 
faith  that  it  inculcates  may  harmonize  with  human 
reason  or  it  may  conflict  with  it  ;  but,  in  any  event, 
it  is  superior  to  human  reason,  being  the  direct  gift 
of  God.  The  kind  of  prayer  that  it  inculcates  is  the 
risking  of  God  for  spiritual  or  temporal  favors,  in  the 
belief  that  effectual  prayer  will  bring  from  the  Being 
addressed,  by  some  supernatural  process,  the  needed 
answer.  Such  are  some  of  the  main  characteristics 
of  supernatural  religion.  They  are  not  specially 
Christian  or  Hebrew.  They  belong  quite  as  much 
to  other  religions.  The  devotees  of  all  the  great 
religions  of  mankind  have  believed  in  the  supernatu- 
ral origin  and  protection  of  their  own  special  faith. 
To  all  these  beliefs,  the  Religion  of  Humanity  is 
opposed.  Its  primary  principle  is  that  religion  is 
the  natural  product  of  the  human  mind,  of  the 
human  race, —  of  the  human  mind  aspiring  indeed 
toward  infinite  Mind,  searching  after  a  First  Cause, 
seeking  to  come  into  practical  relations  with  that 
which  gives  life  and  law  to  all  finite  existences,  but 
still  the  human  mind.  When  ecclesiastical  relig- 
ion says,  "  Religious  truth  came  by  revelation,"  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  replies,  Revelation  is  natural. 
It  is  the  human  mind  unfolding  by  natural  impulse 
to  truth  as  a  flower  to  the  sun.  When  ecclesiastical 
religion  says,  "  Special  divine  inspiration  is  necessary 


276  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMI 

to  bring  religion  upon  the  earth,"  the   Religion  of 

Humanity  answers,  Inspiration  is  by  natural  law: 
it  is  "the  light  that  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh 
into  the  world."  The  Religion  of  Humanity  knows 
no  miracle  greater  than  the  laws  of  nature.  It 
believes  that  the  human  mind,  by  natural  relation- 
ship, is  connected  with  the  source  of  all  that  is, 
and  by  natural  processes  draws  its  life  from  that 
inexhaustible  fountain.  But,  since  the  religions 
their  origins  on  the  human  side  of  this  relation- 
ship, and  since  they  necessarily  have  their  historical 
development  within  human  conditions,  the  Reli 
of  Humanity  affirms  that  they  are  all  subject  to 
human  limitations,  to  human  error  and  infirmity; 
that  they  partake  of  the  stii  -  of  the 

people  holding  them,  I  to  their  phase 

of  mental  enlightenment  and  culture;  and  that  none 
of  them  can  legitimately  claim  infallibility. 

The  Religion  of  Humanity  consequently 
that  the  special  religions  are  progressive  ;  that  they 
arc  evolutions,  not  outright  creations;  that  none  of 
them  was  given  fully  matured,  with  ritual  and  doc- 
trine and  precept  complete,  but  that  all  have  grown 
and  been  shaped  by  the  natural  exigencies  of  all 
historical  development ;  that  their  doctrines  have 
been  wrought  and  rewrought  in  the  chemistry  of 
human  thought ;  that  their  rituals  have  been  grad- 
ually moulded  into  form  by  the  spiritual  imagination 
of  the  people  adopting  them  ;  that  even  their  moral 
impulses  have  taken  direction,  their  very  virtues 
been  modified,  and  their  character  been  transformed, 
by  the  conditions  of  the  changing  epochs  through 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  277 

which  they  have  passed.      There  is  found  no  such 
fixity    in    religion,    no    such    unchangeablcness    of 
doctrine    or   spirit    or   method    in  religious   history, 
as  the  claim  to  supernatural  origin  and  supernatural 
preservation   would   imply.      The   process  of   relig- 
ious development  is  traced  in  the  ordinary  grooves 
of  human  history.     It  is  closely  allied  with  the  nat- 
ural development  of  human  intelligence,  of  language, 
of   literature,  of   nationalities,   and  is  as   easily  ac- 
counted for  on  natural  grounds  as  is  any  of  these. 
To  whatever  spheres  of  truth,  to  whatever  forces  of 
vital   power,   beyond   and  above  humanity,  religion 
may  be  linked, —  and  that  it  is  connected  with  such 
there  is  no  denial, —  this  connection  is  by  laws  and 
processes  perfectly  natural.      The  outreaching,  all- 
embracing  sphere  of  truth   comes   naturally  within 
human    cognizance.       The   circle,    however   high    it 
may  arch,  dips  down   to   the   natural   vision   of  the 
human    mind  ;    and    the    human    mind,    by    natural 
attraction,    follows    the   circle    upward.      Wherever 
the  vital  forces  that  sustain  the  universe  may  have 
their    primal    source,    the    well-springs    by    which 
humanity  is  to  live  and  do  its  work  are  within  the 
natural   domain    of   the   human    mind,   close    to    its 
daily  tasks,  and  do  not  have  to  be  opened  by  any 
miracle  to  be  of   avail.      Therefore  it   is   that   this 
view   of    religion    may   be    called    the    Religion    of 
Humanity, —  that   is,    it    is    religion    conceived    as 
having  its  historical  beginning  in  the  human  mind, 
its  development  in  the  natural  limits  of  human  his- 
tory, its  vital  power  all  along  as  associated  by  the 
natural   relationships    of  human    faculty  with   what- 


278  TV I  ■ E    SERM 

ever  may  be  the  ultimate  Source  and  Unity  ol  all 
power, —  in  contradistinction  from  that  view  which 
refers  the  original  existence  of  religion  t<>  super- 
natural revelation,  and  its  continuance  to  supernat- 
ural preservation. 

From  this  primary  principle,  it  follows,  secondly, 
that  to  the  Religion  of  Humanity  the  special  ; 
ions  are  SO  many  different  sects.  Just  as  Christen- 
dom is  divided  into  numerous  se  i;  'ists, 
Episcopalians,  Catholics,  Unitarians,  Quakers,  and 
the  like,  just  as  Judaism  and  Buddhism  and  Mo- 
hammedanism have  also  had  their  contlictii; 
so  these  various  religions,  Judaism,  Buddhism,  Chris- 
tianity, Mohammedanism,  et< ..  make  the  larger  - 
into  which  the  religion  of  mankind  is  divided.  And 
as  each  sect  of  a  special  religion  thinks  that  it  has 
the  true  faith  or  form  of  that  religion,  and  that  all 
the  others  are  at  some  point  or  points  in  error,  so 
the  devotees  of  each  of  the  world's  great  religions 
think  that  they  have  the  true  faith,  and  that  all  other 
forms  of  religion  are  erroneous.  And  hence  be- 
tween the  religions,  just  as  between  the  sects  of  a 
particular  religion,  the  sectarian  spirit  prevails,  and 
sectarian  controversies  and  conflicts  exist.  No  con- 
troversies are  so  bitter  as  those  which  spring  from 
sectarian  animosities.  No  wars  were  ever  so  fierce 
or  so  bloody  as  those  which  have  been  declared  in 
the  name  of  religion.  No  armies  were  ever  led 
against  each  other  with  such  relentless  and  destruc- 
tive collision  as  those  which  have  been  marshalled 
under  antagonistic  banners  of  religious  faith,  each 
claimed  to    be  the    standard  of   the  true  God,  and 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  279 

therefore  pledged  to  conquer.  To  the  Religion  of 
Humanity,  this  sectarian  spirit  between  the  relig- 
ions, as  between  the  smaller  sects  of  the  same  re- 
ligion, is  all  wrong.  From  it  has  come  not  only 
enormous  and  cruel  destruction  of  human  life,  but 
immense  waste  of  human  power, —  waste  of  in- 
tellectual energy,  disastrous  misdirection  of  moral 
and  spiritual  enthusiasm,  self-consecrations  arrayed 
against  each  other  in  fatal  combat,  and  neutraliz- 
ing each  other's  aims,  instead  of  combining  their 
might  for  the  welfare  of  mankind.  There  is  no 
sadder  sight  in  history  than  this  sight,  so  com- 
mon, of  religious  enthusiasm  battling  against  relig- 
ious enthusiasm  ;  than  the  spiritual  consecration 
of  one  portion  of  mankind  —  this  highest  demon- 
stration of  power  of  which  man  is  capable — in 
deadly  conflict  with  the  spiritual  consecration  of 
another  portion  of  mankind.  Yet,  so  long  as  the 
religions  of  the  world,  in  a  sectarian  spirit,  lay  ex- 
clusive claims  to  supernatural  communications  with 
divine  truth,  each  arrogating  to  itself  the  privilege 
of  having  the  only  saving  knowledge  of  God,  this 
wasting,  ruinous  antagonism  is  inevitable.  To  the 
Religion  of  Humanity,  it  is  morally  and  mentally 
wrong.  Since,  in  its  view,  no  religion  is  infallible, 
none  supernaturally  authenticated,  none  miracu- 
lously guaranteed  to  contain  the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth,  so  this  sectarian 
dispute  and  warfare  among  them  are  as  irrational  in 
logic  as  they  are  bitter  in  spirit  and  destructive  in 
practice.  * 

This  rational  theory  of  religion  does   not    affirm, 


280  TWENTY-FH  I  »NS 

indeed,   that   all   of  the   special   religioi  alike 

in  value.  It  does  not  claim  that  their  contents 
are  equal.  It  does  not  say  that  they  arc  all  equally 
enlightened  or  equally  spiritual  or  equally  adapted 
to  serve  the  needs  of  all  nations  alike  to-day.  All 
that  it  asserts  is  that  the  religions  originated  and 
grew  by  the  same  natural  process;  that  no  one 
of  them  can  assume  supremacy  over  the  rest  by 
reason  of  any  difference  in  respect  to  birth  or 
family.  But  that  the  religions  should  differ  in  the 
relative  value  of  their  contents  is  as  natural  as 
that  literatures  should  differ,  or  th.it  languages 
should  differ,  or  that  nations  should  differ  in 
respect  to  civilization  and  culture,  or  that  in- 
dividual persons,  born  of  the  same  parents,  should 
differ  in  intelligence  and  character.  The  Religion 
of  Humanity,  however,  is  not  so  much  concerned 
to  display  these  natural  and  readily  conceded  differ- 
ences, nor  so  eager  to  prove  by  detailed  comparisons 
that  this  particular  religion  is  superior  to  that,  as 
it  is  desirous  to  discover  and  disclose  the  things  that 
are  good  and  true  in  all  the  religions,  and  to  ac- 
knowledge that,  in  their  time  and  place,  they  have- 
all  rendered  some  good  service  to  mankind.  It  finds 
in  them  all  a  moral  standard  bettor  than  the  pre- 
vailing  moral  practice  and  a  spiritual  aspiration  that 
shames  the  average  grossness  of  daily  living.  It 
will  not  commit  what  has  well  been  called  the 
flagrant  injustice  of  comparing  the  low-water  mark 
of  one  religion  with  the  high-water  mark  of  a 
neighboring  faith, —  the  present  practical  moral 
condition    of    India,    for   instance,  with    the   ethical 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  251 

standard  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount ;  for  this 
is  a  mode  of  comparison  that  might  be  turned  end 
for  end,  and  be  made  to  strike  quite  as  effectively  in 
another  direction.  Christendom  has  had,  for  exam- 
ple, the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  for  eighteen  hundred 
years  ;  and  yet  the  average  practical  morality  of  the 
most  enlightened  Christian  country  to-day  might  be 
put  to  the  blush  by  the  side  of  many  a  chapter  of 
moral  precepts  from  the  Scriptures  of  Asiatic  Brah- 
manism  and  Buddhism.  Nor,  even  comparing  prac- 
tice with  practice,  can  Christendom  boast  very  loudly 
over  non-Christian  countries.  Keshub  Chunder  Sen, 
the.  native  reformer  of  the  Brahmanistic  faith  in 
British  India,  on  his  visit  to  England  a  few  years 
since,  was  astonished  and  grieved  at  the  moral 
condition  of  this  leading  nation  of  Christendom, — 
at  the  prevailing  grossness  in  eating  and  drinking, 
the  intemperance,  the  costly  entertainments,  and 
material  extravagance  of  all  sorts,  the  struggle  after 
and  worship  of  wealth,  the'  inequality  between  the 
rich  and  the  poor,  the  degradation  and  criminal- 
ity of  large  sections  of  population,  and  the  merci- 
less recklessness  with  which  the  upper  strata  of 
society,  with  few  exceptions,  push  their  interests, 
roughshod,  over  the  bodies  and  souls  of  the  lower. 
This  was  a  heathen  judgment  on  Christian  England. 
But  there  is  little  profit  in  these  comparisons,  on 
the  one  side  or  the  other,  except  as  a  means  of  rec- 
tifying partisan  and  sectarian  judgments.  More 
profitable  is  it  for  the  devotees  of  the  different  re- 
ligions to  seek  out  their  agreements  and  identities  ; 
to  inquire  how  much  ground  they  hold  in  common  ; 


282  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMl 

to  compare  ideas  ami  theories  in  the  spirit  oi  truth- 
seeking;  to  meet  each  other  half-way  across  the 
dismantled  walls  that  have  hitherto  divided  them 
into  hostile  camps,  and  to  ask  each  other  how  they 
can  best  put  their  forces  together  tor  the  ameliora- 
tion of  the  human  degradation  and  distress  around 
them.  To  the  Religion  of  Humanity,  it  is  not  so 
vital  a  point  to  decide  with  precision  by  just  how 
much  one  religion  may  be  theoretically  better  than 
another  as  it  is  to  bring  out  and  make  practically 
applicable  what  is  good  in  them  all.  The  intellect- 
ual and  spiritual  rank  of  the  religions  may  be  left  t<> 
the  rational  judgment  of  the  historian,  of  the  jnti- 
quarian  investigator, —  to  the  ultimate  conscientious 
judgment  of  mankind.  Hut,  in  every  one  of  the 
greal  religions,  even  in  those  deemed  the  pooi 
there  is  enough  of  pure  moral  truth  to  save  all  their 
professed  adherents,  if  they  would  only  live  up  to  it. 
Ami  the  question  with  the  Religion  of  Humanity 
that  presses  before  all  others  is  how  to  make  this 
truth  of  avail,  and  turn  it  into  practical  benefit. 

For,  again,  it  is  another  characteristic  of  the  Relig- 
ion of  Humanity  that  it  is  more  eager  to  improve  the 
present  condition  of  mankind  than  to  settle  any  dis- 
puted question  of  theology  or  to  discuss  the  relative 
merits  of  the  many  forms  <>l~  ecclesiasticism.  Th; 
deed,  is  its  main  object, —  the  improvement  of  man's 
moral,  mental,  and  physical  condition  here  in  this 
present  world, —  in  a  word,  the  enlightenment  and 
elevation  of  mankind.  This  object,  to  be  a  human- 
itarian religion,  dominates  all  others,  and  might  wed 
be  regarded  as  giving  to  the  rising  m  dern   faith   its 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  283 

name.     It  would  be  a  Religion  of  Humanity  in  deed 
as  well   as   in  word.     Questions    concerning   man's 
origin  and  early  history  are  not  void  of  profit, —  far 
from  it.     Not  even  are  stories  of  Gardens  of  Eden, 
and  of  Golden  Ages  in  the  past,  and  of  Deities  visit- 
ing the  earth,  walking  visibly  among  men,  convers- 
ing with    them,  and  writing   books    for   the  use   of 
mankind,  wholly  without  interest  to  historical  inves- 
tigation.     But  it  is  a  higher  proof  of  moral  and  relig- 
ious purpose  to  strive  to  make  a  Garden  of  Eden  and 
a    Golden    Age   and   a    Divine    Presence    on    earth 
to-day  than  to  put  faith  in   these    traditions  of   by- 
gone times.     This  rationalistic,  humane  religion  does 
not  deny  that  there  is  a  life  hereafter, —  some  future 
world  for  man;  but  it  affirms  that  man's  chief  and 
all-controlling  duty  is  here  and  now  in  this  present 
world, —  that  to  perform  well  his  part  on  the  globe 
and  in  the  sphere  to  which  he  is  now  allotted,  and 
thus  to  show  that  he  is  able  to  manage  wisely  and 
well  the  world  he  now  possesses,  will    he  the   best 
possible   preparation    for   any  world   that   is   to   be 
given  to  him  hereafter.     This  view  of  religion  does, 
indeed,  in  contradistinction  from  what  has  been  the 
prevailing   teaching   of    the    Christian    Church,    lay 
more  emphasis  on  the  life  that  now  is  than  on  the 
future  life.     It  arraigns,  in  fact,  the  popular  Chris- 
tian theology  for  drawing  man's  thought  too  much 
away  to  the  life  hereafter,  so  that  duties  here  are 
liable  to  be  neglected  in   dreamings  and  visions  of 
a  future  bliss.     The  Religion  of  Humanity  says,  Let 
the  vision  of  the  future  remain  a  vision,  a  hope,  a 
faith,  if  you  can  ;  but  let  it  not  entice  moral  interest 


284  TWENTY-]  l\  1     SERMl 

und  energy  away  from  the  |  sibilities 

and  stern  realities  of  the  present  time.  IL;\\-  out- 
place for  the  present,  here  our  task,  our  charge,  our 
mission.     Let  us  insure  the   hoped-for  felicity  now, 

irth,  right  in  the  spot  where  lies  our  daily  I 
by  a  faithful  inquiry  how  we  can  best  discharge  Our 
as  to  our  fellow-men  and  to  ourselves,  and 
1  faithful  obedience  to  our  own  highest  idea! 
duty.  Mr.  Ruskin  somewhere  says  that  that  is  the 
true  mother  church  where  every  man  takes  the 
hand  of  every  other  man  helpfully.  And  to  bring  in 
this  era  of  fraternity,  of  brotherhood,  of  mutual 
helpfulness, —  to  remove  as  far  as  possible  the  bur- 
dens that  oppress  men,  to  enlighten  ignorance,  les- 
sen misery,  assuage  suffering,  prevent  sin,— is  the 
aim  of  the  Religion  of   Humanity. 

Some  of  the  old  ecclesiastical  types  of  religion,  in 
their  efforts  to  imprison  the  human  mind,  in  their 
attempts  to  stifle  human  thought  and  fetter  personal 
libertv,  in  their  contemptuous  and  even  malignant 
treatment  of  the  human  body,  in  their  persistent 
struggles  to  bandage  and  bondage  the  human  soul, 
and  to  keep  it  in  a  condition  of  mental  and  spiritual 
childhood,  and  in  their  threats  of  infinite  torture  in 
an  eternal  future  by  way  of  enforcing  their  teach- 
ings, may  rightly  be  styled  religions  of  Inhumanity. 
From  all  such  bondage,  from  all  such  cruel  terrors, 
the  Religion  of  Humanity  endeavors  to  emancipate 
the  human  soul.  Its  teaching  is  :  Give  free  room 
for  growth,  for  development,  for  culture  ;  give  oppor- 
tunity, give  liberty,  give  manhood,  spread  knowl- 
edge, inquire,  gather  facts,  think.     Human  society 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  285 

cannot  be  harmed,  but  only  benefited,  by  thought. 
Let  us  have  more  thought,  and  better  and  truer 
thought.  The  Religion  of  Humanity  would  awaken 
the  human  mind  from  the  nightmare  of  old  super- 
stitions that  press  upon  it.  It  would  couch  its 
vision,  and  bid  it  see  the  glories  of  the  world  which 
modern  science  reveals,  instead  of  groping  in  the 
dim  twilight  of  primeval  faiths.  It  bids  us  be  men 
and  women,  whole  men,  whole  women, —  not  neces- 
sarily saints  after  the  ecclesiastical  pattern,  not  the 
cramped,  lop-sided,  long-faced,  and  bloodless  speci- 
mens of  humanity,  expurgated  editions  of  human 
kind,  that  passed  for  saints  in  mediaeval  times,  but  it 
urges  us  to  attain  the  highest  ideals  of  manhood  and 
womanhood  possible  to  our  highest  vision. 

The  Religion  of  Humanity  gratefully  accepts  the 
work  of  prophets  and  apostles  in  olden  time, —  not 
those  of  one  religion  alone,  but  the  sages  and 
spokesmen  of  all  faiths.  Yet  it  does  not  believe 
that  the  spirit  of  wisdom-  and  power  that  spoke 
through  them  has  gone  so  far  away  that  it  cannot 
reach  the  human  mind  to-day.  It  affirms  that,  to 
the  willing  car,  to  the  open  mind,  the  spirit  of  truth 
may  yet  come  with  all  its  ancient  power.  The  Re- 
ligion of  Humanity  has  its  Bibles, —  not  only  the  good 
words  of  one  faith,  but  of  all  faiths, —  the  best  words 
of  all  literatures,  past  and  present.  And  it  would 
use  all  these  external  helps,  past  and  present,— -  the 
prophets,  apostles,  preachers,  sacred  words,  illus- 
trious examples  of  consecrated  and  noble  living, — 
not  to  overawe  and  overpower  with  their  authority 
the  present  mental  and  moral  life  of  mankind,  but 


286  n\  i 

rather  to  stimulate  that  life  like  self-reliance 

and  to  a  nobler  fidelity  to  those  unseen  inner  laws 

that   arc   stamped  Oil  each  soul, —  the   law  of   Re 
and  the  law  of  Duty. 

If  it  be  objected  that  this  R  n  of  Humanity 

is  to  have  very  little  to  say  of  a  Supreme  Being, 
very  little  to   inculcate   in   respect   to   forms  of  wor- 
ship, let  me  say,  in  conclusion,  that   it   require 
subtler   metaphysic    than    philosophy   has    yet   given, 
a  keener  logical  method  thai 

ered,  to  draw  the  line  in  the  human  soul  that  shall 
separate  there  the  divine  elements  from  the  human, 
and  to  say,  On  this  side  is  man,  on  that,  God.  The 
Religion  of  Humanity,  emphasizing  chiefly  the 
m  »ral  idea  and  aim,  docs  not,  it  is  true,  put  into 
the  articles  of  a  creed  any  spe<  illations  concerning 
an  infinite  and  confessedly  incomprehensible  Being 
alleged  to  sit  upon  a  throne  in  the  upper  heavens 
and  to  govern  the  universe  from  that  distant  seat  of 
supreme  sovereignty;  but  it  nevertheless  recognizes 
the  logical  necessity  of  a  Power  more  than  commen- 
surate with  humanity  —  commensurate  with  all  pos- 
sible existence  —  in  and  through  which  all  things 
have  their  law,  their  root  of  life,  their  present 
vitality  and  being:  and  special  organizations  and  ser- 
vices may  be  of  great  use  in  practically  strengthen- 
ing and  enlarging  this  sense  of  vital  relationship. 
But  when  man  lives  by  his  highest  sense  of  duty, 
when  he  lives  a  life  of  strict  integrity,  of  purity,  of 
kindness,  of  love,  of  self-devotion  to  truth  and  right- 
eousness, though  he  may  profess  little  faith  in  the 
conceptions  of  Deity  presented  to  him  in  the  creeds 


THE    RELIGION    OF    HUMANITY  287 

of  the  churches,  yet  such  a  one  carries  within  him 
the  very  presence  and  power  of  the  Eternal.  He 
does  not  need  to  seek  without  to  find  Deity  :  Deity 
has  found  him.  The  infinite  power,  the  divine  life, 
is  coursing  this  moment  through  the  natural  arteries 
of  his  own  mind  and  conscience.  God  dwells  within 
him.  And,  though  he  go  to  worship  neither  at  Jeru- 
salem nor  on  Mt.  Gerizim,  he  carries  ever  within 
himself  that  daily  worship  which  is  in  spirit  and  in 
truth. 

March  24,  1878. 


XX. 
WHAT    DO    WE    W<  >RSHIP? 

"This  world 
Hindu. 

I  would  fain  bring  to  you  this  morning,  friei 
some  vital   central    thought,  which    should   concern 
not  only  our  service  here,  but  the  1 
our  daily  lives.     And  ho  r  indicate  such 

:  Jit  than  by  the  question  which   I  h  tve  ch 
for  the  subj- 

s hip  f     It  were   well,  certainly,    it'   we    shou 
sionally  put  this  question  to  ourselves.     1: 
be  anything  more  than  a  superstition,  ii  any- 

thing  that    at    all    c  ids   to    the    high    claims 

which  in  all  ages  and 

it,  then  it  is  something  of  supreme  moment,  and, 
since  it  concerns  man's  highest  interests,  deserves 
his  most  serious  attention. 

I  said,  "  If  worship  be  anything  more  than  a 
superstition."  But  perhaps  I  shall  be  reminds  ■ 
the  outset  that  there  are  intelligent  minds  who  qui  5- 
tion  whether  it  be  anything  more  ;  that  there  are 
persons  who  affirm  that  all  theology  is  mythology, 
and  that  all  forms  of  worship  are  but  modes  of  super- 
stition, which,  with  the  advance  of  reason,  necessarily 
become    obsolescent  ;    and    that,    therefore,  the  first 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP?  289 

question  to  be  settled  is  whether  worship  has  any 
genuine  and  permanent  reality,  any  rational  and 
abiding  basis.  To  this,  I  reply  that  I  regard  what  is 
called  worship  as  a  specially  organized  expression 
and  aid  of  religion  ;  and  that  I  do  not  think  that 
religion  can  be  rightly  considered  as  synonymous 
with,  or  necessarily  dependent  upon,  any  system  of 
theology  which  the  human  mind  has  ever  framed  or 
believed.  Rather  does  religion  represent  a  faculty 
Mr  function  inherent  in  the  constitution  of  human 
nature  itself,  and  therefore  necessarily  existent  so 
long  as  human  nature  exists  and  keeps  its  identity. 
It  is  the  creator  of  theologies  and  worships,  not 
their  product.  What  becomes  obsolete  and  passes 
away  is  theology ;  that  is,  human  beliefs  about 
religion, —  creeds,  statements  of  faith,  mental  views 
and  convictions  concerning  Supreme  Being  and 
man's  relation  thereto.  These  have  been  continually 
changing  from  the  beginning  of  human  existence, 
and  are  still  subject  to  change  as  advances  are  made 
in  knowledge  and  in  the  application  of  reason  to 
matters  of  human  experience.  Many  of  these  beliefs, 
indeed,  must  now  be  classed  with  superstitions  : 
they  belonged  to  man's  childhood  and  immaturity, 
and  have  passed  away  as  a  manlier  knowledge 
has  been  gained.  And  forms  of  worship  that  were 
founded  upon  such  beliefs  or  necessarily  implied  them 
have  passed  away  too,  or  are  certainly  doomed  to 
the  same  obsolescence  and  oblivion.  But,  amid  all 
such  changes,  religion  itself  has  remained,  surviving 
numerous  sects  and  systems  of  theology.  Religion 
is   man's  recognition  —  through  the  threefold  form 


290  TWENTV-rr. 

of  feeling,  thought,  and  act  —  of  his  own  vital   rela- 
tion to  the  infinite  Power  or  powi  rs  of  the  universe  . 
and  it  is  difficult   to  sec  how  any  sine  mind 
to  have  some  degi  such  a  recognition.     An 

so  long  as  religion  exists,  changing  i 
the  progress  of  human  reason,  modifying  it 
tions  concerning  the  nature  of  infinil  P  wer  —  it  is 
tional  to  affirm  that  it  may  not  institute  and 
Lin  forms  of  worship  which  shall  not  be  amen- 
able to  the  char  superstition,  but  shall  he  in 
harmony  with  its  own  pn  character,  and 
ever  a  fitting  and   helpful   expression   of   itself. 

And  I  wish  specially  to  bring  this  question 
worship  to  our  attention  here,  at  this  resumption 
of  our  Sunday  services  after  several  weeks  oi  sep- 
aration, because  wc  of  this  .society  profess  to  hold 
the  most  rational  and  liberal  views  of  religion.  We 
desire  and  seek  to  let  in  the  light  of  the  fr 
son  upon  all  religious  doctrines  and  institutions; 
and  hence  some  among  us  may  be  already  asking 
whether  such  services  as  we  hold  here  from  Sunday 
to  Sunday  have  any  foundation  in  rational  philos- 
ophy or  in  practical  usefulness.  The  plain  question 
is, —  and  it.  is  a  searching  question  as  well  as  a  plain 
one, —  Can  this  free  human  reason,  which  we  profess 
to  take  for  our  guidance,  consistently  engage  in  any 
form  of  worship?  We  must  answer  this  question 
before  we  can  answer  intelligently  that  other  ques- 
tion, What, do  we  worship? 

But,  first  of  all,  I  want  to  say  that  we  should  not 
allow  ourselves  to  come  to  this  question  with  any 
prejudice  against  the  institution  of  worship  derived 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP?  2C)I 

from  its  irrational  associations.  If  we  think  it 
better,  as  many  liberal  thinkers  do,  in  order  to  save 
ourselves  from  being  misunderstood,  to  abandon  the 
use  of  the  word  worsJiip,  because,  like  a  good  deal 
of  ecclesiastical  phraseology,  it  has  become  damaged 
by  the  superstitious  practices  and  beliefs  with  which 
it  has  been  so  commonly  connected,  why,  well  and 
good.  I,  for  one,  do  not  insist  on  the  word.  Only 
let  us  not  fall  into  the  error  of  thinking  also  that 
that  disposes  of  the  essential  thing  which  the  word 
at  its  root  signifies.  The  word  in  itself,  in  its  gen- 
eral and  etymological  significance,  is  a  good  one. 
The  English  language  has  no  better.  In  its  prim- 
itive Anglo-Saxon  origin,  it  means  the  condition  or 
state  of  worthiness,  or  that  quality  in  any* object  or 
being  which  gives  value,  desirableness,  excellence, 
and  attracts  admiration  and  homage  ;  and  hence, 
secondarily,  it  came  to  be  applied  to  the  acts  by 
which  such  admiration  and  homage  were  expressed 
by  other  beings,  and  then  technically  and  specially 
to  acts  expressive  of  homage  to  Deity.  Now,  human 
conceptions  of  Deity  have  been  attended,  of  course, 
with  abundance  of  errors.  Primitively,  the  power  of 
the  mighty  forces  that  seemed  to  control  the  uni- 
verse was  more  felt  than  their  wisdom  or  order  or 
goodness,  and  man's  ideas  of  that  which  constituted 
the  highest  excellence  or  worth  were  necessarily 
crude  and  low.  Hence,  the  acts  of  homage  toward 
Deity  or  Deities,  or  the  rites  of  worship  which  were 
instituted,  were  often  expressive  of  abject  fear,  and 
were  accompanied  by  many  childish  and  even  degrad- 
ing and  cruel  practices.     With  the  progress  of  en- 


2Q- 

lightenment,  these  crude 

and  man's  conception  of  what  constitutes  the  i 
est  worthiness  h  is  been 

acts  of  worship  have  t  iken  lore 

rational  and  spiritual   form.     Something,  in 

the  old  barb  •  survive 

in  the  n  id  ceremonies  even 

sections  of  civilizi   I         iety.     Still,  it  must   : 
that  enl;  ;  mankind  i  I  have  a  much 

nobler  conception  of   Divine    B<  1  worship  a 

;;    higher    order    of  than   did    their 

ancestors  of  the  primeva  And,  even 

it   may  be   claimed   that,  through    the 
modern  ,   the   idea  of    individual  lality 

and  of  personal  providence  will  be  eliminated  from 
man's  conception  of  Deity  and  he  may  i 
tify  infinite   Being  with  the  supreme  inner  enei 
law,  and  life  of  the  univi  ill  that 

kill  the  spirit  and  mood  of  worship,  and  need  not  kill 
the  instituted  practice  of   it. 

As  this  last  is  a  point  on  which  there  is  a  good 
deal   of   questioning   thought,   let    u  at    it   a 

moment.  My  response  to  the  question  that  might 
here  arise  would  be  that  Science  itself  is  a  worship- 
per. It  is  a  worshipper  of  truth.  Truth  is  the 
supreme  object  of  its  homage  and  devotion.  It  has 
no  self  to  set  up  in  opposition  to  or  apart  from  the 
truth.  And  is  not  homage  to  truth  homage  to  the 
living  spirit,  or  essence,  or  energy  of  the  universe 
which  religion  has  named  Deity  ?  Look,  too,  at  the 
dominant  spirit  and  mode  of  life  of  the  true  scien- 
tific man.     I  sav  the  true  man  of  science  ;  for  there 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP? 


293 


arc  charlatans  on  the  field  of  science  as  everywhere 
else.     There  are  partisans  and  dogmatists  among  the 
class  of  scientific  men  as  among  theologians, —  men 
who  are  bent  upon  advocating  some  pet  theory,  in 
which   self-interest  or  self-pride  is  involved,  rather 
than  upon  eliciting  and  establishing  the  pure  truth. 
But   take   the  true  men  of    science   (and,  in   taking 
these,  we  take  really  the  great  leaders  in  science,  of 
whom  Darwin,  in  our  own  day,  may  be  cited  as  the 
most  conspicuous  example), —  take  these  men,  who 
have  no  other  interest  than  the  discovery  and  pro- 
motion of  truth,  who  spend  their  abilities,  their  fort- 
unes, their  lives,  in  this   unselfish  search,  giving  no 
heed   to   consequences,  but  concerned   only  to  elicit 
from  the  dark  realm  of  the  unknown  the  pure  and 
simple  reality  of  things, —  and  I  know  not  where  we 
shall    find   another   class   of  persons    who    manifest 
more  habitually  that  disinterested  homage  and  devo- 
tion to  a  supreme  object,  which  is  the  very  essence 
of  worship.     And  many  of  this  class  of  men  exhibit 
in  their  work  the  genuine  religious    emotions.     In 
the   presence  of   their   great    discoveries,   they   are 
awed  into  speechless  and  sometimes  spoken  adora- 
tion before  the  mysterious  Power,  the  wisdom  and 
purpose   of   whose   hitherto  secret  ways  they  have 
traced  and  revealed  to  the  world.     We  cannot  say, 
therefore,  that  science  and  scientific  men  are  antago 
nistic  to  the  spirit  of  worship.      They  may  reform 
and   purify   worship,    but    they    do    not   destroy    it. 
They  may  not  often  be  found  in  the  public  places  of 
instituted  worship,  but  this  may  be  because  the  kind 
of  worship  in  these  places  is  not  generally  as  yet  of 


294  TWENTY-FIVE    SERM 

so  high  and  enlightened  an  order  as  is  their  habitual 
mood  of  homage.     They  arc  seekers  and 
of    truth.     Truth    is   the    lode-star  of    their   lives,— 
their  supremest  attraction,  their  all-satisfying  reward. 
How,  then,  can  they  be   other,  though  they  do 
name  him,  than  and  revealers  of  the    Power 

that  religion  calls  God  ? 

Science,   moreover,  dis  within   the  univ- 

to  all  our  in   the  infinitely     -  md   the  infi- 

nitely little,  new  elements  for  Inciting  our  adoring 
wonder:  a  law,  majesty,  order,  beauty,  power,  an 
omnipresent  ceaseless  activity  and  life,  such  as.  in 
their  inner  purport  and  in  their  relation  to  the  life 
and  development  of  mankind,  the  ancients  never 
dreamed  of,  when  they  bowed  down  in  worship 
fore    the  outward  ob;-  nature.      Science  has,  in 

.  revealed  so  much  in  the  material  universe  i' 
unfolded  its  heights  and   its  depths,  and   lifted   the 
curtain  from  so  many  of  its  wonderful  energies,  that, 
so  far  from  the   true  spirit  of    worship  being  dead- 
ened in  earnest  and  observant  minds,  there  is  rather 
almost  cause  for  wonder  that  we  do   not   to 
in  adoration  before  the  mystic  energies   that  burn  in 
the  sun  and  nourish   the  earth,  people  the  heavens 
with  stars,  and  every  year  reclothe  before  our  e 
the  fields  and  woods  with  fresh  life. 

Look,  again,  at  the  artist, —  not  at  the  charlatan  in 
art  more  than  at  the  charlatan  in  science  ;  not  at 
the  mere  artist  adventurer,  who  deals  in  tinsel  and 
clap-trap  to  catch  the  popular  superficial  sense,  but 
at  the  genuine  artist  wdiose  imagination  penetrates 
behind    color   and    form    and    sensational    sound  to 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP?  2Q5 

the  pure  realities  of  things,  and  who  would  reproduce 
nature's  highest  ideal.  What  is  he  but  a  worshipper 
of  beauty  ?  As  the  scientist  gives  his  homage  to 
truth,  so  the  artist  gives  his  homage  to  beauty. 
This  is  the  aspect  of  nature  that  is  his  lode-star.  It 
is  his  special  gift  and  province  to  see  the  excel- 
lences, the  wonders,  that  may  be  embodied  in  form, 
symmetry,  harmonious  sound,  proportion,  grace, 
color,  light  and  shade  ;  and  these  attract  and  hold 
him.  These  excite  his  reverence,  elicit  his  grateful 
joy  and  adoration,  impel  his  devotion,  and  determine 
his  career  and  service.  He  is  a  worshipper  at  the 
shrine  of  beauty.  There  is  the  worthiness  which 
wins  his  special  fealty. 

Again,  there  are  those  who  render  their  chief 
homage  to  a  moral  idea, —  to  some  external  object 
of  social  reform  or  philanthropy.  The)-  may  have 
nothing  of  the  artist's  capacity.  They  may  know 
comparatively  little  of  science,  and  have  neither  taste 
nor  ability  for  its  pursuit.  '  Yet,  no  less  than  the 
artist  and  the  man  of  science,  they  have  their  su- 
preme object  of  devotion.  They  would  live  for  th  : 
welfare  of  others, —  for  the  righting  of  the  wrongs  of 
humanity,  for  the  relief  of  the  burdened,  for  the 
lifting  up  of  the  weak,  for  the  opening  of  opportu- 
nities to  the  neglected  and  ignorant.  Very  likely 
this  class  of  persons,  too,  may  have  little  to  do  with 
the  ordinary  instituted  forms  of  so-called  worship. 
Many  of  this  class  of  men  and  women  in  our  time, 
seeing  how  little  the  churches  in  their  organized 
capacity  are  doing  for  social  reform  and  for  causes 
of  public  philanthropy,  are  disposed  to  stand  aloof 


TWENTY-FIVE    SLUM 

from  them  altogether.     They  think  that  they  can 

spend  the  hours  of  Sunday  to  better  benefit  for  the 
world  than  joining  in  the  customary  church  sen  i 
Perhaps  they  are  inclined  to  say  that  humanity 

•  in  its  most  enlightened  portions,  has  outgrown 
the  need  of  such  services.     Neverthi  per- 

sons, though  eschewing  what  is  eccle  Uy  called 

worship,  have  in  their  special  aim  and  work  the  es- 
sential spirit  and  mood  of  worship  in  its 
nificance.  That  which  draws  and  holds  their  higl 
homage,  and  commands  the  self-sacrificing  devotion 
of  their  lives,  is  the  idea  of  benevolence  to  mankind. 
This  idea  is  to  them  the  essence  of  the  highest 
conceivable  excellence,  or  worthiness.  This,  it  they 
were  to  put  their  conception  of  infinite  Being  into 
words  at  all, —  this  idea,  raised  to  the  infinite  degree, 
would  be  their  highest  definition  of  God.  As  he  is 
the  active  power  of  supreme  benevolence  working 
for  the  welfare  of  finite  creatun  .  can 

they  render  the  best  and  most  acceptable  service  to 
him  by  the  same  kind  of  work  for  the  well-being 
«  f  humanity.  For  this  class  of  persons  especially, 
the  old  Latin  proverb  seems  to  embody  the  id' 
worship:  "  Laborare  est  orare," — "To  work  is  to 
worship." 

I  have  given  these  different  illustrations  for  the 
sake  of  showing  that,  though  we  may  discard  what  is 
technically  called  worship  in  the  history  of  religion, 
we  do  not  thereby  free  ourselves  from  the  essential 
thing  which  the  word  ivorship  in  its  general  signifi- 
cance covers.  Every  true  and  earnest  soul  gives  its 
homage  somewhere ;   has    some   supreme  and  over- 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP  ?  297 

mastering  attraction  that  makes  a  worthy  aim  in  life  ; 
has  some  conception  of  worthiness  above  all  others 
that  moulds  and  determines  life.  It  may  be  an  idea, 
it  may  be  some  aspect  of  nature  or  the  universe,  it 
may  be  the  inspiring  example  and  character  of  some 
great  person,  it  may  be  some  grand  aim  of  philan- 
thropy, or  it  may  be  some  grander,  all-comprehend- 
ing conception  of  universal  excellence.  Whatever 
it  be,  this  is  practically  for  such  soul  its  object  of 
worship.  This  creates  the  shrines  at  which  it  bows 
in  its  sincerest  and  most  effective  devotions,  sets 
for  it  the  goal  of  life,  shapes  character  and  career, 
and  determines  destiny. 

It  must  be  further  said,  too,  that  not  only  do  the 
great,  sincere,  and  earnest  souls  have  such  objects 
of  worship,  but  little  souls,  and  selfish  souls,  and 
souls  that  are  full  of  vicious  impulses  and  travel 
evil  and  pernicious  courses,  have  also  their  wor- 
ships. That  idea  or  attraction  or  wish,  whatever  it 
be,  which  gives  the  dominant  impulse  in  their  lives, 
is  the  object  of  their  homage.  It  may  be  a  very  sor- 
did and  degrading  idea  of  life.  It  may  be  some 
vicious  and  criminal  affection.  It  may  be  some  poor, 
little,  selfish  aim  that  drags  the  soul  down  instead  of 
lifting  it  up, —  as  the  mere  accumulation  of  money, 
luxurious  self-indulgence,  satisfactions  of  carnal  ap- 
petite, ambition  for  personal  power  and  distinction 
for  their  own  sake.  But,  whatever  it  be,  there  is  the 
god  they  actually  worship.  There  is  the  shrine  at 
which  their  hearts  bow  and  their  real  vows  are  per- 
formed. Even  if  custom  or  policy  take  them  to 
church  on  Sunday,  and  with  decorous  attitude  and 


298  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

pious  mien  they  go  through  with  all    the    outward 

worshipful  forms  of  the  place,  it  docs  not  follow- 
that  their  hearts  will  be  in  the  words  of  praise  that 
may  be  sun-',  or  of  prayer  that  may  be  spoken  :  their 
actual  worship  may  not  be  there.  Wherever  their 
strongest  desires  and  affections  may  be,  there  will 
be  their  hearts,  and  there  their  real  homage;  per- 
chance in  some  place  the  very  farthest  in  its  atmos- 
phere and  habits  from  a  church,  and  amid  scenes 
with  which  reverence,  holiness,  and  purity  could 
scarcely  find  a  home.  Their  controlling  aim  in  life, 
though  itself  unworthy,  has  become  for  them  their 
idea  of  worthiness,  and  hence  defines  their  worship. 
Such  souls,  indeed,  are  in  the  moral  attitude  oi 
saying  to  evil,  "Be  thou  my  good." 

The  question,  then,  recurs,  Will  an  organized 
public  expression  of  religion,  such  as  the  ordinary 
Sunday  service  provides,  be  of  any  use  in  helping 
people  to  get  away  from  this  low  plane  of  horn 
up  to  a  higher, —  away  from  sordid  and  harmful  ser- 
vices to  low  aims  and  desires  up  to  something  more 
worthy  and  ennobling?  Will,  in  other  words,  the 
technical  institution  of  worship  be  an  aid  in  purify- 
ing and  elevating  the  actual  worships  of  men  and 
women  in  their  daily  living  ? 

In  order  to  answer  this  question  aright,  we  must 
ask  whether  there  is  not  some  still  nobler,  at  least 
some  more  comprehensive  and  universal  aim  in 
life,  some  grander  and  more  commanding  object  of 
human  homage,  than  any  we  have  thus  far  noted. 
The  scientific  man,  we  said,  is  a  worshipper  of  truth. 
The  artist  is  a  worshipper  of  beauty.     The  philan- 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP  ?  299 

thropist  gives  his  highest  homage  to  the  idea  of 
active  benevolence.  And,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
moral  line,  the  miser  worships  money.  The  ambi- 
tious demagogue  worships  power  and  popular  ap- 
plause. The  voluptuary  worships  carnal  pleasure. 
That  is,  each  soul  makes  a  specialty  of  any  impulse 
or  aim  that  is  all-dominant  with  it.  But  is  there 
not  some  one  aim  or  impulse  which  is,  or  may  be, 
the  possession  of  all  souls,  which  is  never  quite  lost 
out  of  human  nature  under  any  conditions,  which  at 
least  always  appears  in  human  nature  under  good 
conditions,  and  which  will  unite  all  souls  in  a  com- 
mon homage  ?  Most  certainly  there  is.  And  that 
common  impulse  or  aim  is  the  moral  ideal  embodied 
in  the  highest  conceivable  excellent  e  of  personal  char- 
acter. Here  is  one  object  which  should  have  the 
homage  of  all  hearts ;  one  goal  of  attainment  toward 
which  all  human  beings  need  to  set  their  faces,  and 
strive  toward,  in  order  to  complete  their  natures  as 
human  beings.  Here  is  the  central  essence  of  all 
worthiness,  and  therefore  of  all  genuine  worship. 
However  worthy  and  ennobling  any  special  object 
of  homage  and  devotion  may  be  in  itself,  it  may 
leave  human  character  in  some  of  its  features  quite 
undeveloped  and  incomplete.  The  man  who  is 
devoted  to  the  truth  of  science  may  lead  a  most 
useful  life  and  render  vast  benefit  to  his  fellow-men  ; 
and  yet  he  may  be  morose,  ungracious,  and  even 
criminally  neglectful  of  social  responsibilities  and 
obligations  which  he  has  assumed, —  a  one-sided, 
imperfect  character.  The  artist  may  be  enraptured 
with  beauty,  and  bring  forth  productions  which  shall 


300  l  \\  i:n  l  v-ii\  i.  -i  RM 

win    the   admiration   and    awaken    the   most  reverent 
and  noble  feelings  of  all  who  behold  or  listen.       > 
from  the   very  delicacy  of   his  ition,   be 

peculiarly  susceptible  to  those  temptations  which 
come  through  temperament;  is  open  especially  to 
personal    suspicions    and    jealous  1    trom    his 

mood  of  exaltation,  when  his  spirit  mingles  in  the 
closest    worship    with    his    supreme    ide  that 

whether  in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body  he  hardly 
knows,  he  is  apt  to  be  ast  down  into  the  depths  of 
mental  depression  and  despair.  He  needs,  there- 
fore, the  balance  of  sonic  and  more  univ. 
principle  to  give  him  self-poise  and  serenity.  And 
even  in  the  philanthropist,  noble  as  his  work  may 
be,  we  sometimes  miss  sadly  some  of  those  finer 
qualities  of  spirit  that  carry  the  charm  of  affection, 
courtesy,  and  good  will  into  the  personal  relations 
of  life.  Thus,  in  general,  the  special  aim  and  horn- 
need  to  be  included  in  some  larger  I 
which  shall  balance,  control,  and  complete  the 
character  on  all  sides;  and  only  the  moral  ideal  of 
the  highest  conceivable  excellence,  well-rounded  and 
perfect  at  every  point,  can  furnish  the  object  of 
such  homage. 

Xow,  human  nature  at  its  highest  has  an  entrain 
ing  vision  of  such  an  ideal  ;  and  human  nature  at  its 
lowest  has  now  and  then  a  glimpse  of  such  an  ideal, 
—  some  little  ray  of  light  striking  down  from  the 
shining  glory  even  into  its  darkness.  But  we  need 
all  the  helps  possible  to  enable  us  to  keep  the  vision 
full  and  bright ;  or  to  increase  the  ray  of  light,  if  we 
only  have  a  little  glimpse  of  it,  and  to  hold  our  steps 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP?  301 

firm  and  steady  toward  it.  There  is  so  much  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  human  life  that  is  disheartening 
and  depressing,  the  demands  and  necessities  of  the 
body  are  so  importunate,  we  are  all  so  liable  to  be 
absorbed  in  the  petty  and  selfish  interests  of  daily 
care,  there  are  so  many  temptations  dragging  at  our 
feet  and  luring  us  to  this  or  that  fancied  satisfaction, 
that  it  is  with  the  utmost  difficulty  that  we  keep  our 
gaze  steadily  fixed  and  our  feet  moving  steadily  for- 
ward to  the  goal  of  our  highest  moral  ideal.  We 
need  all  the  helps  possible  in  this  contest. 

And  the  Sunday  service  is  one  of  these  helps. 
For  the  world  at  large,  it  is  a  very  important  help. 
This  organized  public  expression  of  religion  ordi- 
narily called  worship  is  designed  to  represent  and 
enforce  the  moral  ideal  of  life.  It  upholds  the. 
standard  of  our  highest  faculties  and  aspirations 
against  the  rule  of  our  passions  and  the  sway  of  all 
lower  tendencies.  It  upholds  the  standard  of  the 
spirit  against  the  sovereignty  of  the  flesh,  of  mental 
and  moral  satisfactions  as  more  noble  and  enduring 
than  material.  It  presents  self-sacrificing  devotion 
to  a  grand  aim  in  life  as  nobler  and  more  enriching 
than  any  possible  form  of  self-indulgence.  And  it 
strives  to  keep  before  our  eyes,  amid  the  dissipating 
and  illusive  enticements  of  our  every-day  living,  the 
attainment  of  a  well-rounded,  all-sided,  perfect  char- 
acter,—  perfect  in  its  moral  integrity,  in  its  affec- 
tional  sympathy  and  helpfulness,  and  in  its  equipoise 
of  aspiration  and  trust, —  as  the  one  absolutely 
worthy  goal  of  human  destiny  for  all  classes  and 
conditions  of  mankind. 


302  I  U  ENTY-FIVE    5ERM( 

I  know,  indeed,  how  far  the  ecclesiastical  us 
worship  have  fallen  from  a  pen  implishment 

of  this,  their  true  aim.     But  they  have  not  faile 
far  as  to  :  tigned  to  instant  disi  truc- 

tion.  I  think  we  should  all  agree  that  even  those 
forms  of  worship,  in  which  there  still  mingle  many 
superstitions  and  errors,  may  be  better  for  those 
who  really  believe  in  them  than  no  forms  of  religious 
ice  at  all.  And  have  any  of  us  outgrown  the 
1  of  some  form  of  public  recognition  of  religion  ? 
If  the  popular  forms  of  religious  m  tons 

to  fail  of   their    highest  useful]  <•  of  the 

:ieons  dogmas,  irrational  ceremi  d  secta- 

rian exclusiveness  that  accompany  them,  all  the 
more  is  it  incumbent  upon  us  to  do  our  part  to 
sustain  some  kind  of  public  institution  of  religion, 
where  reason  shall  be  left  untrammelled  and  thought 
be  encouraged  in  its  loftiest  ambitions;  where  sec- 
tarian walls  are  thrown  down,  and  no  ceremony 
nor  doctrine  nor  letter  of  Scripture  is  allowed  to 
Stand  in  the  way  of  the  free  spirit  of  human  fellow- 
ship on  the  basis  of  the  moral  ideal  ;  where,  in  fine, 
the  main  question  to  be  asked  is  not,  With  what  sect 
or  under  what  name  or  by  what  creed  or  ritual  do 
you  worship?  but  What  do  you  worship?  What 
is  the  controlling  aim,  the  supreme  homage,  of  your 
life  ?  And  we,  friends,  do  profess  to  have  some 
such  idea  as  this  in  our  Sunday  assemblings  here. 
Shall  we  not,  then,  as  we  come  together  again  for 
another  year  of  associated  effort,  come  with  renewed 
consecration  of  purpose,  each  to  be  faithful  at  his 
post,  and,  whatever  his  part  may  be,  to  perform  it 


WHAT    DO    WE    WORSHIP  ?  303 

well,  at  whatever  cost  to  personal  and  self-indulgent 
desire?  With  such  consecration  carried  into  deeds, 
we  may  make  this  house  a  rich  sanctuary  of  benefit 
to  ourselves  and  our  neighbors,— a  veritable  gate- 
way to  heavenly  integrity,  strength,  and  peace  for 
this  community. 

September  14,  1879. 


XXI. 
GOD  IN  HUMANITY. 

"One  God  and  Father  of  all.  ibove  all,  and  through  all, 

and  in  you  all."—  N«W    1  BS1  IMBNT. 

-II-  who    inwardly  rules  the  sun   is   the   same    immortal   Spirit 
who  inwardly  rules  thee."— Hrai 

■  Man  is  a  mortal  god.     He  leaveth  not  the  earth,  and  yet  dwell- 
ed   ab  reat    is    the   greatness   of    his    nature."— Ancient 

There   are   doctrines    in    modern    science    which 
point  to  an  identity  between  the  power  that  exhibits 
itself  as  force  and  law  in  the  material  universe  and 
the   power  that  is  manifest   in  human    personality. 
Man    seems   to    sum  up  in    his    own   nature,  under 
different   and  higher  modes  of  activity,  the  various 
forms  of  energy  and  life  that  were  anterior  to  him 
in  the  development  of  the  world-forces.     In  him,  the 
laws  of  material  nature  become  perceptions  and  sen- 
sibilities.     Instinct  rises  into  intuition.     Sensation 
opens  into  reflection.     The  blind  physical  attractions 
ascend    to  the   height   of   conscious  affections   and 
moral  choice.     And  thus  the  organizing  energy  of 
nature,  as  moral  and  intelligent  being,  is  crowned 
with  conscious  power  over  matter.     Now,  if  we  fol- 
low out  this  thought,—  the  thought  that  the  organ- 
izing energy,  power,  force,  or  formative  and  animat- 
ing principle   in    nature,   reappears,   in    a   new  and 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  305 

higher  form  of  activity,  in  the  consciousness  of  man, 
—  we  have  a  richly  suggestive  theme,  which  might 
be  named  ''Man  as  the  Highest  Manifestation  of  the 
Power  in  Nature,"  or  "  Man  as  the  Highest  Worker 
in  Nature,"  or,  in  more  theological  phrase,  "God 
in  Humanity."  Perhaps,  indeed,  we  shall  have  at 
some  time  a  scientific  doctrine  of  Incarnation. 

And  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  this  thought, 
which  science  is  now  beginning  to  unfold  and  elu- 
cidate, has  found  expression  in  various  religions 
through  the  lips  of  ancient  seers,  as,  for  instance, 
in  the  passages  placed  at  the  head  of  this  discourse. 
These  and  kindred  passages  which  might  be  selected 
show  that,  while  religion  has  generally  inculcated, 
especially  in  the  teaching  accepted  by  the  mas 
that  man  is  under  the  rule  of  a  Providence  wholly 
external  and  supernatural  to  himself,  there  have  yet 
not  been  wanting  those  who  have  had  the  insight 
to  perceive  the  truth  of  the  natural  immanence  of 
Deity  in  man,  and  to  proclaim  the  corresponding 
truth, —  that  man,  under  the  guidance  of  this  imma- 
nent power  in  his  own  nature,  was  meant  to  be 
chiefly  his  own  providence.  The  great  mass  of  the 
people,  under  every  form  of  religious  faith,  have 
been  wont  to  look  for  some  miraculous  aid  in  the 
solution  of  life's  perplexing  problems.  They  have 
expected  the  heavens  to  open  at  their  entreaties,  and 
help  to  be  despatched  from  a  divine  being  believed 
to  be  enthroned  in  the  upper  world, —  some  Jehovah, 
or  Jove,  or  Vishnu,  or  Krishna,  or  Christ, —  to  whose 
direct  supernatural  agency  they  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  refer  every  good  thing  that  has  happened 


306  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMi 

to  them  and  all  right  knowledge  of  religious  th 
that  they  have  ed.     But  the  great  religious 

teachers,  though  sometimes  yiel  these  beliefs 

of  the   people,  have   tried   to   hint  of  another  kin 
providential  guidance,  exclaiming  with  Jesu 
made   me  a   judge   "i"   divider   amoi  ?      Why 

judge  ye  not  of  you  what  is  right?"  or  with 

lha,  "  Self  is  the  '!':...  with  - 

subdued,  a   man    finds  mfind"; 

or  with  the  G  'The  gods  have  not 

given  everything  to  man:  it  is  man  who  has  amel- 
iorated his  own  destiny  "  ;  or  with  the  nr  I  ndu, 
his   own    doings,  one    rises    or   tail-.  .  .  .   Thine 
own   self  is   the   holy  stream,  whose  shrine  is  virtue. 
whos                 is  truth,  whose  bank  is  character,  whose 
waves  are  sympathy.      There  bathe,  l  >  son  of  1'andu  ! 
Thy  inward  life  is  not  by  water  made  pure."      "  How 
can  teaching  help  him  who  is  without  underst 
ing?     Can  a  mirror  help  the  blind  t                   "  Fort- 
une comes  of  he                    e  lion-like  man  who 
A  work    prospers    through   cnu-              not    thro 
vows." 

If  such  shining  truths  as  t  uld  become  g 

eral,  how  they  would  revolutionize  prevailing  relig- 
ious beliefs  and  practices,  not  only  among  the  pe< 
called  heathen,  but  even  in  Christendom!  For  it 
has  been  and  is  to-day  the  dominant  philosophy  of 
the  Christian  Church  that  the  divine  Providence 
which  cares  for  man  acts  through  some  channel  of 
supernal  influence  exterior  to  him,  and  not  through 
his  own  natural  faculties  ;  that  Deity  is  a  being  of 
wholly  separate  and  distinct  individuality  from  man, 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  2>°7 

necessarily  communicating  with  him  through  some 
outward  means  of  revelation  ;  that  religion,  to  be 
genuine  and  trustworthy,  must  be  something  im- 
parted at  the  outset  by  such  external  revelation,  and 
that  its  efficacy  in  any  individual  case  must  depend 
on  the  continued  act  of  supernatural  impartation 
from  this  foreign  source  to  each  individual  soul  ; 
that  religion,  therefore,  with  all  the  graces  and  virt- 
ues it  includes,  is  a  form  of  life  to  be  grafted  upon 
man's  nature  from  without  rather  than  a  natural 
gmwth,  blossoming,  and  fruiting  of  his  own  native 
perceptions  and  energies. 

I  wish  in  this  discourse  to  set  forth  the  counter 
doctrine :  that  religion,  with  all  its  beliefs,  institu- 
tions, history,  is  the  natural  product  of  tHe  human 
mind;  that  the  Deity  that  guides  and  saves  the 
human  soul  is  in  the  soul  and  works  through  the 
soul ;  that  the  Providence  that  cares  for  humanity 
and  acts  specially  for  the  good  of  humanity  is  in 
humanity,  and  acts  chiefly  through  the  human  facul- 
ties. Yet  let  me  remark  at  once,  to  prevent  misun- 
derstanding, that  this  is  by  no  means  to  say  that 
there  is  no  Deity  outside  of  man  and  no  power  or 
providence  above  or  beyond  man.  Deity  is  imma- 
nent in  nature  no  less  than  in  man, —  immanent 
in  the  whole  universe  of  being,  not  only  in  that 
which  comes  under  our  cognizance,  but  in  the  whole 
possible  universe.  Wherever  there  is  any  kind  of 
existence,  wherever  there  is  natural  law,  wherever 
there  is  any  manifestation  of  power,  there  is  the 
presence  of  Deity  and  of  providential  purpose  in- 
dicated.    Within    and   behind  all  phenomena   there 


TWENTY-FH 


is  an  organific   eneq  aim.     A  power   that  is 

organific  does  not  pro<  eed  by  Mind  chance  or  capi 
There  is  a  divinity  and  providence  in  the  affairs  oi 
the  universe,  in  the  affairs  of  nun.  I  do  not  dis- 
pute that  pn  •!.  But  the  proposition  I  would 
maintain  is  this:  that,  wl  immonly 
affirmed  that  man  is  connected  with  Divine  Power 
in  some  external  and  supernatural  way.  man's  rela- 
tion to  this  Power  is  really  internal,  and  the  Power 
providence  to  him  by  operating  in  a  nat- 
ural way  through  his  natural  faculties.  Man  draws 
upon  the  resources  of  Eternal  Being  for  his  own 
life,  hut  he  does  this  through  the  normal  action  oi 
his  own  normal  energies. 

The  first  proof  I  would  adduce  in  support  of  this 
proposition  is  the  history  of  religion  itself.  All  the 
more  recent  researches  into  the  history  of  man's 
religious  development  go  to  show  that  religion  has 
not  come  to  man  by  supernal  revelation,  hut  that  he 
has  slowly  grown  into  it,  and  that  it  has  gradually 
developed  its  character  and  power  precisely  accord- 
in-  to  his  growing  knowledge  and  intelligence  in 
other  matters.  Defining  religion  as  the  expres 
of  man's  sense  of  his  relation  to  a  mysterious  power 
or  powers  in  the  universe  conceived  as  affecting  in 
some  way  the  destiny  of  human  beings,  we  find  that, 
historically,  this  expression  has  everywhere  had  its 
source  in  the  smallest  beginnings,  fust  appearing 
in  acts  and  beliefs  that  seem  to  the  cultivated  relig- 
ious thought  of  a  later  time  very  crude  and  absurd. 
These  beginnings  of  religion  with  primitive  mankind 
are  indeed  almost  lost  in  their  obscurity,  so  slight 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  309 

are  they,  so  little  illuminated  by  rational  intelligence, 
and  so  mixed  with  matters  that  seem  entirely  foreign 
to  the  devout  moods  of  the  modern  mind.  That  is, 
religion  in  its  origin  corresponds  with  the  mental 
condition  of  mankind  in  that  primitive  era.  And, 
in  the  historical  development  of  religion,  this  same 
correspondence  has  been  preserved,  disclosing  every- 
where natural  continuity  and  not  supernatural  inter- 
vention. When  man  was  in  a  condition  of  mental 
childhood,  or  wherever  he  is  in  that  condition  to-day, 
his  religion  was  and  is  that  of  a  child.  When  the 
human  race  was  a  child  mentally,  it  "spoke  as  a 
child,  it  understood  as  a  child,  it  thought  as  a  child," 
in  religious  things.  Whenever  and  wherever  man 
has  been  barbarian,  his  religion  has  partaken  of  bar- 
barous practices.  Whenever  and  wherever  man  has 
been  intellectually  narrow,  his  religion  has  been  nar- 
row, bigoted,  severe,  apt  to  fall  into  bitter  propa- 
gandism  and  persecution.  Whenever  and  wherever 
man  has  been  intellectually  imaginative,  his  religion 
has  shown  the  characteristics  of  his  imagination. 
With  breadth  of  culture,  wiser  thought,  increase  of 
intercourse,  and  widening  of  acquaintance  with  the 
human  family,  and  a  deeper  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  has  come  a  broader,  profounder,  and  more 
charitable  religion.  Looking,  therefore,  at  the  his- 
torical development  of  humanity,  it  does  not  appear 
as  if  religion  had  ever  been  a  gift  to  man  direct  and 
outright  from  the  heavens,  ready-made  with  its  be- 
liefs and  institutions  for  human  use,  but  that  it  has 
come  slowly  and  gradually  as  the  natural  product 
of  the  human  intellect  itself,  under  the  natural  con- 


ditions  of   mundane  experience.     Man   ha 

his  relij  he  has  grown    int<>  everything 

else  dI"  value  tha  .    belongs  to  him.     Relij 

has   been   evolved   from    the  inborn  i  and 

functions   of   his    mind,    growing    with    his    growth, 
under   the   various    disciplii 

strengthening  with   his  strength.     From    it >    small 
ii  certain  natural  sentim      I 
of   the  primitive  human   mind,  enlarging 
iening  with  the  mind's  growing  thought  under 
the   manifold    tuition    of   outward   circumsl 

Teeable  contact  with  nature,  oi  spur  oi 
inner  and  outer  forces,  it  has  thus  gradually  unfol 

liefs  and  institutions,  its  mighty  power, 
,s,  but   a.Ko    its   immortal    hi 
and  its  sublime  m  inctities. 

itive  powei  b 
where   else   in    the  universe,  to  work    its  way  up 
outward  to  self-manifestation  b)   a  process  oi   slow 
1  ition  and  -row:  I        human  mind  even,  which 

ime  to  .tent    the   in 

ment  of  the  divine  on  this  planet,  i. 

to  be  created  by  this  slow  process,  and  to  be  grad- 
ually  adapted    to   its    service   by   the   training  and 
strengthening  of    its   faculties   under  the   push  and 
•  s  of   the   manifold  f<  which  the  earth  has 

been  the  scene. 

And,  if  religion  itself  has  come  into  human  history 
through  the  natural  action  of  man's  natural  faculties, 
then  much  more  may  we  argue  that  the  special  aims 
of  religion  on  which  theology  has  laid  stress,  such 
as  the  providential  guidance,  education,  and  destiny 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  3 1 1 

of  the  human  soul,  will  be  accomplished  in  the  same 
way  ;  namely,  not  by  a  supernatural,  mysterious 
Power  working  outside  and  above  the  human  fac- 
ulties, but  by  a  providence  which  works  in  and 
through  the  human  faculties  themselves,  and  which 
I-  none  the  less  creative  and  divine  because  it  is 
natural  and  human.  Let  us  turn,  then,  to  this  more 
practical  side  of  our  theme, —  to  the  question  of 
Divine  Providence  in  respect  to  the  actual  condition 
of  humanity,  individually  and  collectively,  to-day. 

The  way  in  which  the  popular  theology  has  met 
this  question  —  throwing,  as  it  does,  so  much  respon- 
sibility upon  Almighty  Tower  for  man's  condition, 
so  little  upon  man  himself  —  has  been,  I  do  not  hesi- 
to  say,  very  demoralizing;  though  this  demorali- 
zation has  not  shown  itself  practically  to  the  extent 
that  it  would  have  done,  for  the  reason  that,  when 
it  comes  to  the  practical  matters  of  every-day  life, 
people  are  quite  apt  to  leave  their  creeds  and  betake 
themselves  to  the  teachings  of  experience  and  com- 
mon sense.  Their  own  observation  and  experience 
have,  in  fact,  taught  them  a  truer  theology  than  that 
which  they  have  learned  in  the  churches  in  Sunday 
sermons  or  gathered  from  so-called  religious  books 
and  newspapers.  The  Church  has  told  them  of  an 
interposing  Deity,  working  when  and  where  he  will, 
by  an  instantaneous  personal  volition  not  to  be  ac- 
counted for,  not  to  be  naturally  anticipated  nor  its 
ways  calculated,  yet  coming  in  response  to  zealous 
human  prayer;  but,  in  their  daily  life,  they  have 
learned  of  a  Deity  that  is  as  regular  as  the  sunrise 
and  sunset,  that  comes  like  "the   seasons   in  their 


j  12  TW1  N  l  V-l  ivi.    3ERM 

order,"  and  works  everywhere  through  the  ra< 
natural  law,     of  a  Deity,  therefore,  whose  o  be 

in  be  depended  upon.     The- 
ology has  pictured  to  them  a  Deity  wl 
would  bear  them  up  in  their  hands"  and  save  them 
from  destruction,  though  they  should  violate  nat 

;  but  life's  experiei  shown  them  that  the 

angels  that  come  to  the  rescue  of  man  from  the  dire 

It  of  broken   laws  which   are  never  annulled, 
either    in    the   guise  of  human   beings  or  ol 
(  me   not   at   all.     Th< 

ken  factory  -iris  who  threw  themselves  fron 
upper  window  of  their  burning  mill    found  I 
to  prevent   their  b<  shed  to  death  upon  the 

ment.       The  tive     intervention     for    their 

ue  —  which  man's  afterthought  is  now  providing 
for  such   emergenci  uld  have  been  a   perma- 

nent  fire  attached    t«»  the  wall.     Thus   it  is 

that    the    experi  if  common   life  and   common 

rvation  are  conducii  I  tach  a  truer  doctrine 
of  divine  help  and  guidance  for  man  than  has  been 
commonly  inculcated  by   the  ecclesiastical   theology 

hristendom.     Peopl  -.dually  learning  that 

the  grand  providential  r<  3  for  insuring  human 

;  i  ess  and  happiness  are  stored  within  the  keep- 
ing  of  human  beings  themselves, —  th  i1  sufficient  of 
Deitv  is  naturally  incarnate  in  humanity  to  endow 
humanity  with  the  power  of  being  a  providence  and 
a  savior  to  itself. 

If  it  be  necessary  to  support  these  propositions 
by  arguments,  we  can  hardly  go  amiss  of  the  illus- 
trations in  proof  of  them,  to  whatever  part  of  human 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  3  I  3 

history  or  society  we  turn.  Look  at  the  progress 
of  human  society  itself, —  its  progress  in  knowledge, 
in  intellectual  grasp  and  power,  in  natural  science,  in 
the  arts,  in  political  and  social  morality,  in  every- 
thing that  concerns  the  well-being  of  man.  How 
has  it  all  been  effected?  Not  certainly  for  man  by 
a  power  outside  of  him,  pouring  into  his  nature,  as 
if  it  were  simply  a  passive  receptacle,  all  these  pos- 
sessions  and  achievements  of  knowledge,  virtue,  and 
civilization  ;  but  they  have  all  come  by  the  laborious 
exertion  of  mail's  own  faculties,  they  are  the  grand 
result  of  his  own  putting  forth  of  effort.  They  have 
not  been  given  to  him  ;  but  he  has  acquired  them, 
earned  them.     The  human  not  have  them 

at  the  start;  but  they  are  the  wages  of  its  toil,  the 
achievements  of  its  thought  and  enterprise  through 
all  the  generations  of  its  existence  on  the  earth. 
And  they  are  related  to  the  great  Tower  that  is  the 
ultimate  cause  of  all  things- only  by  the  fact  that  it 
was  in  the  powers  that  produced  them.  The  Deity 
that  has  made  man  what  he  is  in  civilized  society  to- 
day lias  not  been  shaping  and  moulding  him  so  much 
from  the  outside  as  from  the  inside.  The  Divine 
Power  has  been  manifest  in  the  human  thirst  for 
knowledge,  in  the  mental  effort  to  resist  or  control 
natural  forces,  in  the  long  struggle  of  humanity,  and 
in  the  impulse  at  the  bottom  of  the  struggle,  out 
and  up  from  material  and  barbarous  conditions  of 
existence  into  a  life  of  mental  enjoyment  and  of 
social  justice  and  love.  We  may  say  that  Deity  has 
done  it.  Yes  ;  but  it  is  Deity  that  had  incarnated 
itself   in    the    human    race,    that    wrought    in    and 


I.}  T\\  I.MV-I  l\ 

through  the  very  su  of  the  human  faculties, 

that  assumed  flesh  and  b  man  him 

Or  look  for  illustr.ition.it  some  special  poinl 
the  history  of  human  society.     The  time  was  when 

ly    ailments    and    dis 
direct  visitation  upon  man  from  Heaven,  eil 
penalty  for  some  sin  m  faith. 

ne  thought  of  ti 
them    and     !  I    ral    law.       ! 

them   \\  ind   in   prayer,   in   faith,  in  the 

>me  mystic. d  spiritual  virtue 
the  touch  of  a  holy  pei  ' 

rine  of  d  taught  in  the  Xev.  ient. 

riser  know'. 

to  human  and  finil  e  md  only  the 

•   •  ernatural 

:     cure.      Tl 

is.  indeed,  even  in  minds   b  enlightened, 

that   dise  lly  sent   upon    mankind   for 

spiritual  discipline;  yet  I  have  noticed  that  even 
such  de\  I    belie!    do  not    shrink    : 

resorting  to  the  common  human  and  finite  remed 
instead  of  1  of   prayer  and    » 

ious  penance,  for  ridding  thei  of  the  disorders 

and  the  discipline  together, —  a  symptom  that  the 
old  idea  is  fast  vanishing.  The  modern  mind  finds 
the  seeds  of  bodily  disease  and  suffering  in  some 
violated  law  of  nature, —  violated  either  wilfully  or 
ignorantly  or  unavoidably, —  though  not  always  vio- 

I   personally  by   the  sufferer  :  he  may  sutler  for 
another's  trai  ion.     It   finds  the  cause  in  bad 

ventilation,   defective    drainage,    unwholesome    food, 


GOD    IN"    HUMANITY  3  I  5 

in  false  fashions  of  dress,  in  intemperance,  licen- 
tiousness, and  other  abuses  of  physical  appetite, — 
in  short,  in  the  thousand  ways  of  physical  neglect 
and  abuse  by  which  human  beings,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  violate  sanitary  laws.  And  as  the 
human  mind  has  found  the  cause  of  physical  disease- 
within  the  finite  conditions  of  existence,  so  it  has 
found  the  remedy  there.  Since  the  cause  is  the 
violation  of  natural  sanitary  laws,  the  remedy,  a 
preventive  as  well  as  cure,  must  be  the  knowledge 
and  observance  of  those  laws,  with  such  temporary 
alleviation  as  medical  science  may  be  able  to  render 
by  counteracting  an  evil  already  done.  Here,  then, 
is  a  plain  case — and  it  is  no  small  or  trivial  case, 
this  whole  vast  region  of  human  physical  'disease  and 
—  where  it  is  now  pretty  generally  admitted  that 
man  is  his  own  providence,  his  own  savior.  To  call 
upon  an  Almighty   Power  in  the  heavens  to  avert 

mess  or  to  chan  suits,  to  stay  the  ravages 

of   a    pestilence,  to    keep   the  cholera   from  a  city,  is 
beginning  to  be  regarded   by  sensible  and  thinking 

pie  everywhere  as  the  relic  of  a  superstition 
which  must  soon  take  its  place  with  many  other 
beliefs  which  the  world  has  outgrown  and  left  be- 
hind. It  is  beginning  to  be  seen  that  the  Power  has 
not  to  be  summoned  from  afar,  but  is  already  here; 
that  it  has  first  made  its  presence  known  by.  the 
disorder  and  pain  that  have  ensued  on  the  infringe- 
ment of  some  law  of  nature  ;  that  its  presence  is  in 
that  law,  bruised  and  broken  and  indeed  sinned 
against ;  that  it  is  also  in  the  human  knowledge  that 
has  detected  the  fracture  and  raises  the  wholesome 


lUIM',-1!. 

warning  of  obedience;  in  the  science  that  Bends 

onaries  into  regions  of  contagion  in  the  shape 
of  disinfectants,  and  that  has  unfol  led  the  moment- 
ous law  of  heredity  and  discovered  antidotes 

sing  the  demon  of  poison  from  diseased  blood  ; 
in  the  public  sentiment  that  establishes  Sanitary 
Commissions  and  Boards  ol  He  Ith,  and  demands 
that    streets  shall    he    sewered    and    swept,   dun, 

premises  be  kept   pure  and  sweet,  and   people  be 
taught   to  obey  the   lav.  eanliness.     Hut  not 

only    in   these   channels    flows  the    Power   that    is  a 
providence  for  man  in  his  Je  with  physical  dis- 

We  may  find  it  also  in  more  tender  guise : 
in  the  faithful  nursing  and  watchful  care  of  human 
sympathy;  in  woman's  gentle  fidelity  in  the  sick- 
room; in  her  instinctive  tact  and  the  magnetic  virtue 
of  her  pi  h  ;   in  the  unwearied,  patient 

devotion  of  a  wife'  .  or  mother's  love,  which 

often,  by  its  very  unweariedncss  and  patience,  saves 
the  sick  from  the  grasp  of  death.  So  that  this  is 
a  view  of  Providence  of  which  it  cannot  be  said  that 
it  is  all  the  cold  operation  of  law:  the  great  element 
ive  comes  into  it,  and  is  at  the  very  bottom  of 
it, —  all  the  warmth  and  tenderness  of  the  pui 
richest,  human  love, —  of  that  love  which  is  "the 
fulfilling  of  the  law." 

And  what  has  here  been  said  of  the  way  of  Provi- 
dence in  dealing  with  man's  physical  diseases  and 
infirmities  might,  with  a  slight  change  of  words, 
be  applied  with  equal  truth  to  man's  moral  con- 
dition and  progress.  The  great  law  holds  good 
here:  that   every  violation   of  the  principle  of  right, 


GOD    IX    HUMANITY  3  I  7 

every  departure  from  virtue,  brings,  in  some  shape, 
the  retribution  of  pain, —  brings  moral  disease  and 
disorder.  The  disease  and  pain  do  not  come  by 
any  arbitrary  fiat  of  a  distant  Deity  seated  on  a 
throne  in  the  upper  heavens,  but  they  come  as  the 
natural  consequence  of  the  moral  transgression  : 
they  are  the  direct  effect  of  an  evident  cause;  and 
the  Deity,  the  divine  principle  and  providence,  is 
there  on  the  spot  in  that  pressure  of  natural  en< 
which  inherently  impels  a  cause  to  its  effect.  The 
Providence  is  in  the  warning  given  by  the  moral 
pain, —  in  the  remorse,  the  stricken  conscience,  the 
loss  of  self-respect  and  of  others'  approbation, — 
tn  indicate  that  there  has  been  moral  disobedient  e  . 
a  warning  given,  therefore,  in  mercy  to  turn  the 
transgressor  back  to  virtue  and  to  moral  safety. 
The  husks,  the  hunger,  the  swine  for  company, 
the  disappointment  and  disgust  of  the  prodigal 
son  in  Jesus'  immortal  parable,  were  the  natural 
result  of  the  vicious  prodigalism  to  which  he  had 
yielded;  yet  there  was  a  providence  in  them, — 
a  providence  inherent  in  the  very  severity  of  their 
discipline, —  since  they  drove  him  back  "to  him- 
self "  and  to  the  ways  of  righteousness.  The  Prov- 
idence is  in  the  law  by  which  "whatsoever  a  man 
sows  that  shall  he  reap,"  and  whereby  "the  way 
of  the  transgressor  is  hard  "  ;  and  in  the  further 
law  that,  when  man  is  warned  by  the  hardness  of 
his  evil  way,  warned  by  penitence  and  remorse, 
of  his  transgressions,  every  effort  which  he  then 
makes  in  virtue,  every  struggle  against  temptation, 
every  step  he  takes   in  the  returning  way,  will   help 


TWENTY-FH 

to  bring  him  back  to  moral  health  and  ; 

power   of    help,  like   the   power   of   retribution,  18 

mysterious     Being    I  through 

of  some  ti  of  atonement,  but  there 

right  at  the  that 

first    turns    his    heart    homeward    to    virtue,    in    the 
aspiration   and   hope   thai  ■     ■■  him, 

in  the  very  stren  :•'  which 

bringing  him 

all   this,  ■ 
I?     L  »ve  ?     See,    then, 

'now  this  sam     I  ity  in  humanity. 

»  love!     See  it  in  tl  I 

of  a   mother's   love,  who,  the    true    hui 

mother,  nevi  :es  her 

him  into  wl  vice  he 

wander.     (  I  in  the  more  general  philan- 

thropy thai    is  seeking  in  all  the  dark  and  squ 
corn*  '    human  It 

>ivine  Love  that  thus  works  in  the 
for  his  fellow-man, —  tha 

1  crime,  to  carry,  it 
sible,  some   comfort,  to  lift  up,  if   pi 

raded  human  beings  into  a  capacity  for  a  pure 
enjoyment  and  into  a  place  of  moral  health.  It  is 
Divine  Love  that  is  working  through  the  efforts  of 
benevolent  men  and  women  to  put  down  intemper- 
ance, and  to  check  the  "social  evil,"  and  to  emanci- 
pate human  beings  from  every  form  of  slavery,  and 
to  bring  into  human  society  the  elements  of  justice 
and  brotherhood.     It  is  through  this  love  of  man  for 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  319 

humanity  that  Universal  Love  manifests  its  provi- 
dential care,  and  gets  its  purposes  for  human  welfare 
accomplished. 

Behold  the  same  providential  aim,  again,  in  differ- 
ent phase, —  in  the  love  that  founds  the  home  and 
provides  for  the  family  and  permeates  the  household 
with  all  pure  affections  ;  in  the  love  that  shines  out 
of  the  face  of  human   friendship  ;  and   in  that,  too, 
which  draws  neighbors  together  in  intelligent,  help- 
ful  sympathy.     What  shall  we  say,  also,  of  that  pas- 
sion for  the  truth  which  often  comes  into  the  human 
heart,  that  devotion  to  the  right,  that  fidelity  to  con- 
viction and  conscience,  whereby  a  man  will  endure 
il   and    torture,  and  go  down  to  death  before  lie 
will  swerve   one  jot  from  that  which  he  believes  to 
be  the  line  of  rectitude?     What  shall  we  say  of  the 
martyr  souls  of  humanity, —  those  who  face  the  dun- 
geon, the  gallows,  the  cross,  or  all  the  promises 
frowns  of  the  world,  and  still  stand  with  manly  up- 
rightness to  sav  or  do  the  thing  that  seems  to  them 
right    and    true  ?     Or  of  that    later  type  of   martyr 
spirits,  blossoming  right  out  of  the  materialistic  en- 
rises  of  this  busincss-dL-  ;e, —  the  railroad 
,'meers,  brakemen,  sea-captains,   who,   with  their 
train  or  ship  rushing  into   the   very  jaws  of  destruc- 
tion, have  stood  unflinchingly  at  their  posts  of  duty, 
and  gone  down  to  death  with  their  hands  still  clinched 
to  their  tasks  and  their   nerves  serene  with   heroic 
self-command, —  saving  others  by  their  calm  courage 
and  lofty  presence  of  mind,  while  themselves  they 
could  not  save  ?     What  can  we  say  of  any  such  deeds 
but   that  they  are  an  exhibition   in  humanity  of   the 


320 

that    makes  foi  A 

.  in  fronl 
an  approaching  expn 
rounds  a  cui 
his  whole  strength   into 

tngine,  and  brings  1  the 

! 

a  miraculous  i  ill  in  the 

virtui  '•'.  md  in  the  alert- 

of  the  <  the  ski] 

of  his  arm.     The  in  their 

. ,  while  the  hero  wl  '.ken 

from  the  train  scalded   nigh 
of  steam  by  the  ••     ■  I  ion. 

Illustrations   like   these,  which    might   be   ini 
nitely  multi]  that  1 

manifests  his  power  for  Inn,  and  what  is 

the  main  metho  lence   for  man's 

guidance  and  protection.  itar)  and  re- 

demptive resources,  wh  d  or  m 

orood.  ai  I   within   the   human   Eacult 

arc   made   effective   through    human  activity, 
divine   energies   arc    wielded   through    the    human. 
They  are  involved  in  the  very  substance  oi   human 
thought     and     fo  and     skill;     in 

human  courage,  bravery,  virtue,  and  love;  in  man's 
power  to  learn  nature's  laws  and  to  put  himself, 
through  science  and  art,  into  harmony  with  them. 
Divine  Providence  is  human  providence.  The 
Eternal  Power  cares  for  man,  protects  him,  insures 
his  progress,  holds  him,  we  may  even  say  in  the 
old    Hebrew  phrase,    "in    the   hollow    of    his  hand," 


GOD    IN    HUMANITY  321 

but  does  it  through  that  portion  of  the  Universal 
Energy  and  Love  which  is  made  active  in  the  mind, 
heart,  and  hand  of  the  human  race. 

Does  some  one  ask,  then,  Why  say  "  Deity "  at 
all  ?  Why  not  say  at  once,  with  the  Positivists,  that 
Humanity  is  our  God  ?  Because,  let  me  say  in  con- 
clusion, when  man  finds  a  firm  basis  for  his  knowl- 
;  when  he  adheres  by  an  inward  necessity  to  a 
conviction  of  truth  ;  when  he  stands  up  courageously 
to  defend  the  right  and  to  keep  his  virtue  ;  when, 
resisting  temptations  of  selfish  ease  or  pleasure,  he 
shapes  his  actions  by  a  pure  impulse  of  love  and 
charity  ;  when  he  plants  his  feet  so  solidly  at  the 
post  of  duty  that  no  threats  of  peril  nor  bribes  to 
ambition  can  move  him  from  his  rock  of  Conscience, 
—  then  he  feels  that  he  is  acting  with  the  strength 
of  a  power  which,  though  it  may  manifest  itself 
through  his  perception  of  truth  and  his  individual 
adherence  to  right  and  goodness,  is  yet  not  of  him- 
self nor  limited  by  himself,  but  is  at  the  very  basis 
of  the  universe  and  coterminous  with  the  realm  oJ 
all  existence;  because  he  is  conscious  that  he  is  the 
instrument  of  a  purposive  process,  reaching  out,  in 
respect  to  its  root  and  its  goal,  as  far  beyond  any 
purpose  that  centres  in  himself  as  the  vast  universe 
of  matter  extends  beyond  his  little  body  of  flesh  ; 
because  he  is  conscious  that  his  life,  material,  men- 
tal, moral,  is  but  a  part  of  the  larger  life  of  humanity, 
to  which  he  is  harmoniously  or  inharmoniously  re- 
lated in  proportion  as  he  follows  or  does  not  follow 
this  inward  monitor  of  truth  and  duty  ;  because  he 
is  conscious  that  humanity  itself,  with  all  its  achieve- 


-22  TWENTY-FIVE    si  KM 

ments,  with  all  its  capacities  and  possibilities,  is  but 
a  little  larger  part  of  the  vast  grandeur  of  the  stu- 
pendous system  of  the  universe,  which  in  all  its 
parts  is  animated  with  one  life,  by  one  power;  and 
use  he  must  needs  believe  that  beyond  and 
above  humanity  there  may  be  other  races  of  finite 
beings,  as  above  our  earth  there  are  other  and  innu- 
merable worlds,  and  that  through  all  these  infinite 
ranges  of  worlds  and  races  there  runs  the  unity  of 
one  vital  energy.  For  these  reasons,  he  says  not 
Humanity,  but  Deity,  when  he  would  express  the 
greatness,  the   everlastingness,   the   incomprehensi- 

bleness  of  this  1'ower  which  comes  to  manifestation 
in  his  being,  and  works  in  and  through  his  faculties, 
and  is  the  source  of  the  wisdom  and  love  that  are 
the  guiding  providence  and  felicity  of  his  individ- 
ual and  social  existence.  Though  Standing  in  the 
strength  of  his  own  natural  resources  and  faculties, 
and  relying  for  present  and  future  welfare  upon 
his  perfected  manhood,  he  yet  perceives  that  this 
strength  and  this  manhood  are  but  the  partial  rev- 
elation of  a  Power  older  and  mightier  than  himself, 
older  and  mightier  than  the  human  race.  And 
hence,  before  the  unifying  Energy  that  is  working 
through  the  inconceivable  vastness  of  things,  he  lilts 
his  eyes  in  adoring  wonder,  and  exclaims,  "O  God, 
I  too,  a  speck  of  conscious  dust,  am  thrilled  with 
life  from  Thee  !  " 

October  10,  1SS0. 


XXII. 

THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY. 

"  Possessions  vanish  and  opinions  change, 
And  passions  hold  a  fluctuating  seat; 

But,  by  the  storms  of  circumstance  unshaken 
And  subject  neither  to  eclipse  nor  wane, 
I  >'■  TV  exists." 

W.  Wordsworth. 

"What  Morality  have  we  left?"  is  the  title  of 
a  bright  article  in  the  Nortli  American  Review  for 
the  current  month,*  satirizing  those  modern  ethical 
theories  (and  particularly  the  system  of  Herbert 
Spencer)  which  many  persons  think  are  destined  to 
supplant  the  old  theological  theory  of  morality  as  the 
revealed  law  of  God.  My  answer  to  the  question 
would  be  :  I  admit  to  some  extent  the  force  of  this 
satirical  criticism,  though  wholly  ready  to  maintain 
that  morality  must  find  some  other  than  a  theolog- 
ical basis,  and  yet  we  have  all  the  morality  left  in 
the  world  that  there  ever  was,  and  a  still  growing 
quantity  of  it. 

But  morality  and  its  foundations  have  been  so 
implicated  with  certain  theological  creeds,  the  teach- 
ing has  been  so  prevalent  and  dominant  that  the 
moral  law  is  the  directly  revealed  will  of  God,  and  is 
enforced  by  a  supernaturally  decreed  system  of  re- 

*May,  1881. 


T\\  I.N  I  VII  V  1.     -1   RM 

Is  and  punishments  extending  through  all  el 
nitv,  that  it  is  not  strange,  when  modern  philosi 
ventures  to  pronounce  these  positions  untenable  and 
it   is  plain,  on   all   sides,   that    the  old   theological 
creeds  are  nearing  their  downfall,    if    there  should 
be    anxiety    and    alarm    lest     the    very    bulwark 
morality  are   to    be    undermined,  and   public   and  pri- 
vate virtue   are   to   collap.se.      Nor   should  it    sm; 
us    it'   there   should    ensue    some   actual    evil   on    this 

mt,  some  temporary  confusion  ol  moral  id< 
some  lapses  from  moral  conduct  on  the  part  of 
people  tor  whom  the  old  moral  standard  has  been 
loosened  by  the  loss  of  their  old  religious  faith  and 
who  have  not  yet  found  any  new  standard  either 
of  religious  or  moral  faith.  It  should  not  surprise 
us  if  some  people  should  say  —  some  are  already 
saying  it  —  that  the  moral  law  is  just  like  religious 
belief:  it  is  only  this  or  that  man's  opinion  ;  it  has 
no  authority  over  others;  it  is  only  individual  and 
relative  ;  there  is  nothing  absolute  and  unchangeable 
in    it  ;  at  best,  it   is   only  tin-  voice  of   the 

Strongest  number  of  opinions  ;  as  a  late  writer  ex- 
presses it,  it  is  only  what  "society  "  at  this  moment 
may  happen  to  demand  of  me.  And,  when  morality 
is  believed  to  be  nothing  more  than  this, —  required 
conformity  to  the  voice  of  public  opinion, —  there 
arises,  naturally,  in  the  human  breast  a  feeling  of 
rebellion  to  it.  Public  opinion  may  be  a  tyranny. 
What  right  except  that  of  might  have  the  majority 
of  opinions  to  rule  the  minority  ?  Why  is  not  my 
opinion  of  what  I  may  do  as  good  as  my  neighbor's? 
Why  should    I  act  to   please  him,  and  not    myself? 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  325 

Why  not  make  my  own  interests  and  happiness  the 
law  of  my  action?  Of  what  concern  is  it  toothers 
what  I  may  do,  so  long  as  my  action  does  them  no 
harm  ?  Why  may  not  a  man  do  what  he  pleases 
morally  as  well  as  mentally, —  make  a  fool  of  him- 
self, if  he  chooses, —  if  his  conduct  brings  no  injury 
toothers?  This  is  reducing  the  law  of  morality  to 
the  doctrine  of  extreme  individualism  of  liberty,  and 
making  liberty  synonymous  with  individual  license. 
Yet  such  questions  and  reasoning  may  be  heard  ; 
they  even  appear  in  print.  And  there  is  not  a  little 
of  this  confused,  clouded,  and  practically  pernicious 
view  of  the  moral  law  among  people  for  whom  the 
old  theological  basis  of  morals  is  gone. 

Nor  should  it  much  surprise  us  to  fincl  the  Nihil- 
ists in  Russia,  or  a  portion  of  them,  crying  out  in 
the  same  breath  against  God  and  against  the  claim 
that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  moral  right.  The 
one  type  of  theological  teaching  which  they  have 
heard  is  that  God  has  revealed  his  will  as  the  law 
of  right  through  the  Church,  and  that  the  head  of 
the  Church  —  God's  vicegerent  on  the  earth,  some- 
times even  called  God  himself — is  the  emperor  of 
all  the  Russias,  the  head  of  a  government  which 
they  have  never  known  otherwise  than  as  a  per- 
sonal despotism,  whose  will  was  the  law  for  them  to 
obey.  What  kind  of  a  God  and  what  kind  .of  a 
law  of  right  has  Russian  absolute  monarchy  been 
teaching  ?  What  wonder  if,  under  such  theological 
indoctrination,  the  Russian  people,  in  large  num- 
bers, have  come  to  confound  the  very  law  of  moral 
right    with    the    will    of    the    despotic    government 


J20"  T\»  ENTY-1  IVI.    51  KM 

which  has  crushed  them,  and  even  the  being 
with  the  tyranny  they  are  struggling  against  I  Thus 
incensed,  they  cry  out:  "Away  with  them  all, — 
ernment,  Church,  God,  the  Moral  Law!  To  us, 
they  mean  but  one  thing, —  Despotism.  And 
potism  is  mental  and  moral  despair  I "  Nor  need  it 
surprise  US  that  something  similar  has  occurred  in 
France,  where,  among  1.  the  working 

people,  the  revolt  against  religion  has  also  been,  to 
a  large  extent,  a  revolt  against  the  moral  order  of 
society.  For  here,  too,  the  morality  that  has  : 
taught  has  been  so  implicated  with  a  false  theol 
and  has  often,  too,  found  such  poor  exemplification 
in  the  daily  lives  of  the  priesthood,  and  the  Church 
as  a  whole  has  really  done  or  aimed  to  do  so  little 
lor  the  enlightenment  and  temporal  improvement  of 
the  people,  that  it  is  difficult  for  the  people  to  draw 
any  clear  line  of  distinction  between  what  the 
Church  has  taught  as  theology  and  what  it  has 
taught  as  morality.  They  have  a  strong  feeling  that 
the  Church,  with  its  orders  of  priesthood,  with  its 
rich  benefices,  with  its  lavishly  endowed  monastic 
societies,  has  somehow  flourished  at  their  expense  ; 
that  it  has  neglected  them,  kept  them  poor  and 
ignorant  and  miserable, —  has,  in  short,  been  their 
oppressor  and  plunderer.  And  hence  they  have 
declared  war  against  the  Church  and  all  that  the 
Church  stands  for,  without  stopping  to  cull  the  evil 
from  the  good.  They  would  sweep  it  all  away, — 
theology,  religion,  Deity,  the  moral  law, —  level  all 
to  the  ground,  that  they  may  begin  anew  with  abso- 
lutely fresh  materials  on  unencumbered  premises. 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  327 

And  yet,   in  spite  of  these  evidences  of  a  moral 
collapse  of  society  in  consequence  of  a  growing  dis- 
belief in  the  old  creeds  of  religion,— in  spite,  too, 
of  clangers  nearer   home  that    I    am   ready   to  admit 
and  would  not  wink  out  of  sight,— to  the  question, 
"What  morality  have  we  left  ?"   I  repeat  my  answer, 
"  All  that  there  ever  was,  and  a  still  growing  quan- 
tity of  it."     By  this,  I  do  not  mean  that  there  may 
not   be  a  temporary  relaxation  of  the  moral  energies 
of   society   and    a    temporary    depression    of    moral 
standards,  especially  in  certain  classes  of  people  and 
in  certain  countries  that  have  been  most  dominated 
by  the  old   theologies.     There  have  been  such  de- 
pressions, such  temporary  deflections  and  retrograde 
periods,  in  regard  to  morality  in  the  past*  history  of 
mankind.     But   the   course  of    human   history  as  a 
whole  has  been  one  of  moral  progress.     The  moral 
power  at  the  heart  of  the  race  has  always  been  equal 
to  the  emergency  of  overcoming  and  annulling  any 
temporary  aberrations  from  the  line  of  healthy  moral 
perception  and  conduct.     And  so   I  argue  that  this 
will  be  the  case  now  :  that  there  will   be  in  human 
nature  ample  elasticity  of  the  moral   sentiment   to 
insure  recovery  from  any  moral  paralysis  that  may 
be  caused  by  the  decay  and  fall  of  the  old  theologi- 
cal basis  of  morality  ;  that  morality  will  still  survive 
all  disasters,  as   it   has   hitherto,  and   still   grow  and 
progress. 

But  I  reach  this  conclusion  not  solely  or  chiefly 
by  the  argument  of  comparison  with  similar  periods 
in  the  past.  When  I  say  that  there  is  all  the  moral- 
ity in   the  world   that  there  ever  was,  and  that   it  is 


328  T\\  I.N  1  Y-l  I\  I.     -I   KM 

likely  to  advance  and  increase  instead  of  being  over- 
thrown, I  mean  that  the  source  and  vital  elements 
of   morality  remain  :    I   mean   that   the  roots  of   il 

not  destroyed,  are  not  touched,  by  any  wind,  how- 
ever fierce,  of  theological  scepticism  which  ma) 
an  interval  be  shaking  down  violently  some  of  its 
foliage  and  fruit:  I  mean  that  the  foundations  of 
morality  continue  the  same  and  undisturbed,  what- 
ever theological  foundations  may  be  undermined  and 
whatever  disturbances  may  ensue  to  those  super- 
ficial  ethical  structures  which  have  been  confusedly 
built  partly  on  theological  and  partly  on  moral  b 
Genuine  morality  has  always  rested  on  a  foundation 
ot  its  own.  Implicated  with  certain  theological 
beliefs  by  the  popular  religious  teaching,  it  is  yet 
in  reality  independent  <>f  all  theological  beliefs, 
appears  in  connection  with  them  or  apart  from  them, 
and  runs  down  to  a  root  vitally  its  own, —  and  that 
root  an  ineradicable  part  of  human  nature  itself. 
Morality  is  the  best  part  of  religion,  but  it  has  not 
necessarily  part  or  parcel  in  any  theology.  And 
when  the  confusing  teaching  which  has  so  long 
sought  to  make  people  believe  that  the  moral  law  is 
an  essential  adjunct  of  certain  theological  creeds  and 
not  safely  to  be  separated  from  them  shall  have 
passed  away,  and  people  shall  be  trained  to  trace 
clearly  in  their  thought  the  moral  law  to  its  own 
simple  and  ineradicable  root,  and  to  trace  with  the 
same  clearness,  in  respect  to  actual  conduct,  the 
practical  moral  law  as  it  lies  plain  to  sight  in  that 
nexus  of  natural  vital  energy  which  binds  unerringly 
moral  cause  to  moral   consequence,   then   shall    we 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  329 

have  a  revival  of  morality.  That  sovereignty  which 
theological  faith  will  have  at  last  let  go  from  its 
loosening  grasp  will  be  seized  by  moral  faith.  The 
standard  of  moral  action  will  be  lifted  higher  and 
held  with  firmer  nerve  for  the  guidance  of  the 
bewildered  flocks  that  have  lost  their  ecclesiastical 
shepherds.  There  will  be  fresh-voiced,  clear-toned 
rallying-cries,  summoning  defenders  for  the  right 
and  the  true  ;  an  awakening  resolution  and  energy 
in  all  the  moral  factors  of  society ;  a  movement 
forward  of  the  now  theologically  divided  armies  in 
one  morally  united  host  against  the  forces  of  error 
and  wrong.  Then  may  we  expect  new  triumphs  of 
justice  against  long-entrenched  usurpations  and 
iniquities,  and  the  acquisition  for  man  of  new  in- 
dividual rights  and  of  more  equal  opportunity  in  the 
name  of  human  brotherhood. 

But  I  may  be  justly  reminded  that  this  is  a  proph- 
ecy of  rhetoric,  and  that  -what  is  wanted  on  this 
question  is  thought  and  logic.  Let  me  try,  then,  to 
show  what  appears  to  me  to  be  that  abiding  and 
indestructible  root  of  morality  and  source  of  all 
moral  power  which  will  remain  after  theological 
systems  may  have  vanished,  and  which  may  be  all 
the  more  clear  and  the  more  powerful  when  they 
shall  have  ceased  to  obscure  the  knowledge  of  it 
and  interfere  with  the  right  culture  of  it.  First,  I 
cannot  accept  as  satisfactory  substitutes  for  the 
theological  theories  of  ethics  those  revivals  of  old 
philosophies  which  are  now  urgently  advocated  and 
with  considerable  apparent  support  from  the  scien- 
tific doctrine  of  evolution,  whereby  the  moral  law  is 


330  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

resolved  into  an  inward  impulsion  to  secure  one's 
own  greatest  happiness  or  is  explained  on  the  altru- 
istic utilitarian  ground  of  an  obligation  to  secure  the 
greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number.  I  do  not 
doubt  that,  when  a  person  has  reached  a  very  high 
and  refined  condition  of  moral  culture, —  what  we 
might  call  the  celestial  heights  of  morals, —  his  own 
greatest  happiness  would  only  be  possible  when  he 
was  making  the  utmost  efforts  for  the  true  happi- 
ness of  others.  But  there  are  multitudes  of  people 
who  have  not  reached  that  height  ;  multitudes  of 
people  whose  present  and  controlling  idea  of  happi- 
ness is  the  satisfaction  of  self-interests,  the  gratifi- 
cation of  certain  personal  desires  and  aims,  the 
successful  pursuit  of  pleasures  of  a  merely  material 
nature.  With  this  large  class  of  people,  their  ideas 
of  happiness  are  so  closely  identified  with  the  selfish 
enjoyments  belonging  to  their  low  grade  of  life  that 
they  are  incapable  of  even  appreciating  the  motive, 
much  less  of  acting  upon  it,  of  sacrificing  their 
own  present  happiness  for  the  sake  of  the  higher 
happiness  of  making  others  happy.  How  are 
these  people,  who  are  living  on  the  plane  of  this 
low  idea  of  what  happiness  is,  to  be  reached  by  an 
ethical  theory  which  gauges  moral  obligation  by 
an  effort  for  personal  happiness  ?  So,  too,  I  do 
not  doubt  that  the  ultimate  result  of  the  highest 
moral  conduct  is  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest 
number.  But,  as  a  practical  test  for  ascertaining 
what  course  of  conduct  is  morally  required  at  any 
present  moment,  this  utilitarian  standard  of  morality 
is  worthless.     At  the  best,  it  can  be  only  an  approx- 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  33 1 

imate  test,  never  complete  and  absolute.  For  who 
would  ever  be  able  to  trace  all  the  results  of  his 
proposed  action  so  as  to  be  competent  to  say  what 
kind  of  act  would  effect  the  greatest  good  for  the 
greatest  number  of  people  who  might  in  some  way, 
at  some  time  near  or  remote,  be  affected  by  it  ?  If 
we  had  to  go  through  with  such  a  calculation  before 
moral  action,  our  moral  action  would  often  cease 
altogether,  and  could  never  come  with  that  prompt- 
ness of  decision  on  which  often  its  whole  efficiency 
depends.  And,  even  though  the  experiences  of  util- 
ity for  successive  generations  may  have  come  to 
be  organized  in  mental  action  as  intuitions,  as  is 
claimed,  I  yet  fail  to  see  how  an  analysis  of  the  ideas 
of  either  utility  or  of  happiness  will  yield  the  con- 
stituent elements  of  the  moral  sense  as  it  has  devel- 
oped in  the  history  of  mankind.  The  essential 
elements  of  the  idea  of  moral  law  and  the  essential 
elements  of  the  ideas  of  happiness  and  of  utility  are, 
in  my  judgment,  totally  distinct,  so  that  the  latter 
cannot  beget  the  former. 

Where,  then,  shall  we  find  the  basis  or  root  of 
the  moral  law  ?  I  find  it  in  the  native  intuitive  fac- 
ulty of  the  human  mind,  though  not  in  that  devel- 
oped form  which  the  intuitional  philosophy  usually 
claims.  The  root,  the  ever  vital  germ  of  morality, 
is  intuitive:  it  belongs  to  the  human  mind  as  such, 
to  intelligence  per  se  ;  but  its  development  has  been 
under  the  tuition  of  experience.  Let  us  see  how 
these  statements  may  be  substantiated. 

According  to  the  now  commonly  accepted  view  of 
the   condition    of   primitive    man,  there  was  a  time 


332  1  WENTY-]  l\  I     -I  RMi 

when  man  could  hardly  be  called  a  moral  being. 
The  moral  germ  or  capacity  must  have  been  within 
him,  but  it  was  unmanifested.  There  was  only  a 
fierce  Struggle  for  existence  amid  savage  conditions 
of  life.  The  deepest  instinct  was  for  life, —  the  in- 
stinct of  self-preservation.  Whatever  thri 
peril  to  life  was  shunned  :  it  was  an  evil.  Whatever 
promised  help  to  life  was  sought  :  it  was  a  good. 
The  primitive  man,  thus  seeking  instinctively  to  pre- 
serve his  life,  would  begin  to  classify  things  as  good 
or  evil  according  as  they  aided  or  hindered  this 
instinct  for  life.  And,  anon,  he  would  classify  per- 
sons in  the  same  way.  It  another  man  attempted 
to  interfere  with  his  existence,  to  deprive  him  of  it, 
or  to  take  away  the  things  he  had  gathered  for  sus- 
taining it,  the  intruder  was  an  evil  man,  to  be 
resisted.  By  the  very  necessity  of  such  a  condition 
of  existence,  the  first  reflective  act  of  consciousness 
on  the  part  of  the  primitive  man  must  have  been 
the  instinctive  feeling  of  a  right  to  his  existence, 
and  the  consequent  right  to  defend  that  existence 
against  any  external  assaults.  Hut  all  this  might 
have  gone  on  without  any  active  moral  sense.  It 
merely  classified  things  (and  persons)  as  good  and 
not  good.  But  as  soon  as  the  mental  perception 
came  to  any  individual  of  this  primitive  race  that,  if 
another  individual  had  no  right  to  attack  his  life  or 
deprive  him  of  anything  he  had  gathered  necessary 
to  life,  or  harm  his  life  in  any  way,  so  he  had  no 
right  to  attack  that  other's  life  or  take  away  his  sus- 
tenance or  bring  any  harm  upon  him,  then  dawned 
the  moral  sense,  then  began  the   sovereignty  of  the 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  333 

moral  law.  It  began  in  the  mental  transference  to 
another  of  the  same  kind  of  rights  as  were  claimed 
for  one's  self ;  it  began  in  primitive  man  coming 
one  day  to  think,  and  say  to  himself,  "  If  I  have 
a  right  to  existence,  then  my  neighbor-man  there 
has  a  right  to  existence  ;  and,  if  he  has  no  right  to 
harm  my  existence,  then  I  have  no  right  to  harm 
his  existence."  And  this  is  a  perception  that  must 
just  as  certainly  have  come,  as  soon  as  there  was 
intelligence  enough  to  understand  the  relation,  as 
came  the  perception  that  two  and  two  make  four  ; 
and  in  it  is  the  germ  of  all  morality.  Generalized, 
it  is  the  intuitive  perception  of  the  necessary  equation 
of  rights  between  man  and  man  in  their  relations  to 
each  other.  And  this  is  my  definition  of  the  moral 
law.  Its  popular  expression  is  the  Golden  Rule, 
which  has  appeared  in  substantially  the  same  form 
in  all  the  leading  religions  and  nations  of  the  globe  ; 
and  its  most  central  ethical  word  is  justice.  This 
definition  puts  morality  on  a  basis  as  absolute  and 
unchangeable  as  that  on  which  the  science  of  math- 
ematics rests  ;  a  basis  independent  of  the  variable 
phases  of  theological  belief,  and  that  will  remain 
after  all  the  systems  of  theology  that  have  ever  been 
devised  may  have  passed  away.  The  idea  of  justice 
depends  on  no  ecclesiastical  creed,  nor  is  it  imper- 
illed by  any  assaults  upon  religious  faith  ;  and  the 
intuitive  idea  of  justice  is  the  corner-stone  of  ethics. 
And,  as  we  thus  find  the  basis  of  the  moral  law 
in  the  eternal  principle  of  equity,  inevitably  made 
manifest  in  the  human  consciousness  when  the 
mental  perception  came  of  the  mutuality  of   social 


I  w  BNTY-FH  i     51 

relations   among  men.    bo  the   enforcement   <»f  the 

mora]  law  is  guaranteed,  perpetually  and  eternally,  in 

the  logical  sequence  of  cause  and   effeel      R   «rard 
for  moral  obedience,  punishment  for  moral  disobe- 
dience,  an-    no    arbitrary    fiat    of  a   distant    Deity, 
I  for  some  -  ar  judgment-day  at  the 

opening  of  the  future  world,  but  they  are  principles 
or  laws  of  physical,  mental,  and  social  life  that  are 
working  right  here  in  this  world,  and  in  all  worlds 
where  intelligent  beings  arc  living  and  acting 
'her.  These  laws  are  a  part  of  the  very 
machinery  of  human  action.      Right  action   produces 

some  kind    of  g 1  fruit  as  its  natural   consequence; 

and  wrong  action  produces  BOmc  kind  of  evil  fruit  as 
its  natural    conse  juence.      The   good    fruit    is    order, 

il  health  and  power,  mental 
and  moral  productiveness,  in  fine,  all  the  natural 
results  of  obeying  natural  laws  <,t'  life,  growth,  and 
progress.  The  evil  fruit  is  disorder,  pain,  misery, 
physical  derangement,  mental  and  moral  incapacity 
and  disaster, —  or,  in  fine,  all  the  natural  disturb- 
ances, failures,  and  wrecks  caused  by  a  violation  of 
the  well-known  laws  of  life,  growth,  and  progress,  in 
the  largest  sense  of  these  words.  Good  action  pro- 
duces ever  better  and  larger  life  ;  evil  action  is  ever 
undermining  the  very  forces  of  life,  and  tends 
toward   its  destruction. 

In  the  complicated  relations  and  mixed  activities 
of  human  beings  under  the  conditions  of  modern 
society,  of  course  we  do  not  always  see  either  moral 
obedience  or  moral  transgression  working  simply  by 
direct  line  to  its  appropriate,  natural  result.       In  the 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  335 

confusion    and    contradiction    of    manifold    actions 
there  may  be  mutually  neutralizing  tendencies  ;   and 
yet  the  net  product  is  the  exact  result  of  the  really 
operative  moral  forces.     And  sometimes,  too,  there 
may  be  a  superficial  exterior  action  that   may  appear 
moral  and  may  attain,  yet  also  superficially,  its  moral 
rewards ;    and   this    for   a   time   may  veil    our  eyes 
against   discerning  the  real    moral  transgression   of 
the  actor,  and  also  against  detecting  the  moral  degen- 
eration which  is  surely  going  on  in  his  character  and 
is    the  natural    and    unescapable  result    of   his    har- 
bored vices.     But    such    successful   concealment    of 
the  process  does  Dot  prevent  the  operation  of  the  law 
of  cause  and  consequence.     It  is  just  as   impossible 
for  a  man  to  continue  to  do  evil,  however  secretly, 
and  still   keep  his   nature  good,  and    so  go   on  per- 
petually to  receive  the  rewards  of  goodness,  as  it  is 
for  a  thorn-bush  to  bring  forth  grapes  or   a  bitter 
fountain    to    give    sweet    water.       At    some    time, — 
though    possibly    not    in    this   world,    and    yet   most 
likely    even    here,— all     these    disguises    must    drop 
away,  and   the  character  stand  alone  in   its   naked- 
ness for  just   what   it    is,    with   no  capacity  for  any 
companionships    or    enjoyments    that    are    not     in 
accordance  with    its  own    nature.      But  even  if    the 
disguises  remain,  though   they  conceal,   they  do  not 
heal  the  moral  disease    nor    stay    the    constant    de- 
crease of  moral  power  within.      Xo  disguise  is  thick 
enough  to  evade  the  piercing  sharpness  of  that  pun- 
ishment.    Equally  impossible  is  it  for  the  character 
of  genuine  virtue  to  miss  its  highest  rewards,  how- 
ever  outward  appearances    may   seem   to  belie  the 


336  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

rule.  It  may  be  easy  to  take  away  from  the  deserv- 
ing some  outward  crown  of  happiness  and  to  press 
a  wreath  of  thorns  in  its  place.  But  it  is  the  lot 
of  the  most  virtuous  that  they  care  the  least  for 
the  outward  crowns, —  that  they  are  simply  content 
with  virtue  itself;  and  there  is  no  force  in  the  uni- 
verse that  can  rob  them  of  that  highest  possible 
reward  which  can  be  accorded  to  any  finite  soul, — 
the  growing  power  for  virtue  and  diminishing  sus- 
ceptibility to  any  kind  of  evil  Influence. 

Here,  in  this  natural  system  of  moral  reward  and 
retribution  as  the  necessarily  distinct  and  legitimate 
consequences  of  certain  contrary  courses  of  action, 
shall  we  find  all  needed  sanctions  for  the  practical 
enforcement  of  the  moral  law.  And,  when  the  theo- 
logical theories  of  ethics,  with  their  reliances  upon 
methods  of  outward  atonement  for  removal  of  moral 
guilt,  with  their  decrial  of  personal  righteousness  as 
of  less  importance  to  salvation  than  mental  faith, 
with  their  appeals  to  escape  some  indefinite  curse 
and  wretchedness  in  the  world  to  come  rather  than  a 
very  palpable  curse  and  wretchedness  here  and  now 
as  the  result  of  violating  laws  of  right, —  when  these 
theories  shall  have  ceased  to  obscure  and  obstruct 
the  natural  moral  vision  of  mankind,  it  will  become, 
not  as  is  sometimes  said,  more  difficult,  but  really 
more  easy,  to  appeal  to  moral  motives  in  the  conduct 
of  life  and  to  do  it  genuinely  and  effectively.  Then 
will  it  be  seen,  as  never  before,  that  mankind  is  re- 
sponsible for  its  own  condition  ;  that  into  the  hands 
of  human  beings  themselves,  through  their  rational 
intuition  of  right  in  their  relations  with  each  other, 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  337 

through  their  capacity  for  intelligent  understanding 
of  nature's  laws  and  their  obligations  of  reason  and 
conscience  to  co-operate  with  them,  have  been  com- 
mitted the  progress,  the  happiness,  the  destiny  of 
the  human  race. 

More  than  ever,  perhaps  it  will  be  charged,  does 
this  philosophy  reduce  human  sentiment  and  con- 
duct to  "mere  morality."  It  is  a  view  of  the 
moral  law  that  does,  indeed,  detach  morals  from 
theology,  but  not  necessarily  from  religion.  Rather 
does  morality,  thus  considered,  blossom  into  relig- 
ion. The  moral  law  is  detached  from  the  outward 
authority  of  Mount  Sinai  revelations,  from  the 
dogmas  of  miraculous  births  and  Mount  Calvary 
atonements;  but  it  is  not  detached  from,  but  rather 
more  fully  identified  with,  the  supreme  aim  and 
movement  of  the  universe.  Here,  therefore,  the 
central  thought  of  our  theme  opens  toward  a 
higher  sweep  and  wider  horizons.  What  is  religion 
in  its  strictest  yet  most  generic  sense  but  this : 
inwardly,  in  each  individual  mind,  the  feeling  of 
relation  toward  a  Universal  Power  and  Law ;  out- 
wardly, individual  conduct  in  the  service  of  that 
higher  Law  rather  than  of  selfish  aims  ?  The  moral 
law,  in  the  dim  primeval  ages,  had  its  prophetic 
germ  in  the  instinctive  feeling  of  the  individual 
man  that  he  had  a  right  to  life  and  whatever  was 
necessary  to  life's  preservation.  When  the  mental 
sense  perceived  that  others  had  equally  the  same 
right,  then  individual  men  found  themselves  in- 
wardly constrained  to  respect  this  right  in  one 
another.     Thus,  the  germinal  instinct  of  self-preser- 


338  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

vation  opened  into  conscience, —  a  common  knowl- 
edge and  confession  that  preservation  was  the 
equal  right  of  all.  But  all  this  was  on  the  lowest 
plane  of  life, —  the  plane  of  mere  material  life. 
That  was  what  life  first  meant, — the  perpetuation 
of  physical  existence  and  physical  gratifications. 
But,  as  humanity  progressed  in  development,  higher 
and  higher  grades  of  life  were  discerned,—  the  life 
of  the  affections,  sympathies,  and  charities,  the  life 
of  thought,  the  life  of  inquiry  and  search  after  truth, 
the  life  of  equity,  justice,  and  rectitude  ;  in  short, 
the  affectional,  mental,  moral  life.  And  then,  too, 
it  became  evident  that  man  attained  his  richest  and 
most  satisfying  manhood  when  he  lived  not  in  and 
for  the  body  merely,  but  for  the  preservation  of  this 
higher  life  of  mind  and  heart  and  soul  ;  and  that  the 
lower  forms  of  life  must  always  be  subordinated, 
often  sacrificed,  to  the  higher  ;  that  sometimes  even 
the  existence  of  the  body,  or  the  individual  physical 
life,  must  be  yielded  up,  in  order  to  save  the  higher 
life  of  the  mind's  integrity  or  the  heart's  purity. 
And,  when  this  point  is  reached,  it  is  but  a  step 
to  the  central  seat  of  the  most  genuine  religion, — 
to  the  conviction  that  it  is  not  the  individual  in- 
terest, the  individual  life,  that  the  great  world- 
process  is  bent  toward  sustaining  and  preserving, 
but  some  universal  interest  and  life  which  the  in- 
dividual was  meant  to  share  and  stand  for  and 
promote  ;  but  a  step  to  the  spirit  that  cries  to  the 
Law  of  Truth  and  Righteousness,  "Though  thou 
slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  thee";  but  a  step  to  the 
practical  devotion  which,  in  utter  self-forgetfulness, 


THE    PERMANENCE    OF    MORALITY  339 

loses  life  to  find  it  again  in  the  finer,  larger  truth 
and  in  the  bettered  condition  of  humanity.  And 
this  is  religion. 

May  22,  1 88 1. 


XXIII. 
THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT. 

"  A  thinking  man  is  the  worst  enemy  the  Prince  of  Darkness  can 
have." — T.  CARLYLE. 

Last  Sunday,  I  gave  you  what  all,  I  suppose, 
would  acknowledge  to  be  a  "  practical  sermon."  It 
was  concerned  directly  and  solely  with  conduct  and 
those  springs  of  conduct  that  exist  in  the  impulses 
and  affections  of  the  heart.  It  had  nothing  to  do 
with  theories  or  speculations  or  intellectual  beliefs, 
except  by  implication  to  condemn  them  as  tests  of 
conduct  and  character.  To-day,  I  am  to  give  a 
sermon  which  may  seem  to  some  persons,  at  first 
glance,  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  tenor  of  my 
teaching  a  week  ago, —  a  sermon  on  the  Practicality 
of  Thought.  I  propose  to  defend  thought  as  an  ele- 
ment of  religion,  even  when  it  is  largely  concerned 
with  considering  theories  and  determining  intellect- 
ual beliefs. 

Yet  there  is  no  real  inconsistency  between  the 
two  positions.  However  strongly  we  may  urge  the 
conduct-side  of  religion, —  so  strongly  that,  when  we 
hear  a  discourse  with  specially  apt  emphasis  pre- 
senting that  side,  we  are  moved  to  exclaim  :  "  That 
is  all  there  is  that  is  vitally  practical  about  religion, 
all  that  is  of  any  account ;  let  us  have  that,  and  we 


THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  34I 

may  let  all  the  beliefs  and  creeds  and  speculations 
concerning  religion    go," — I  say,  however  strongly 
we  may  urge  this  view,  and  maintain  (and  maintain 
truly)  that  preaching  should  be  directed  to  this  end, 
yet  it  may  also  be  maintained,  and  with  equal  truth, 
that  behind  this  conduct-side  of  religion  there  must 
be  a  solid,  substantial  thought-side,  to  give  the  con- 
duct-side legitimacy.     Conduct    must  have  beneath 
it  a  logical  basis  of  rationality,  or  else  it  lacks  valid- 
ity.    It  may  not  be  always  necessary,  and  often  it 
detracts  from  direct  practical  effectiveness,  to  point 
out  in  detail  the  separate  layers  of  this  groundwork 
of  sound  reasoning;  and  yet  it  is  there,  if  the  con- 
duct be  true.     It    may  have   become    so  inwrought 
into  the   mental    temperament    as  intuition  and  in- 
stinct that  it  may  be  appealed  to  more  effectually  in 
many  cases  without    the    construction    of   a   logical 
syllogism  ;  and  that  kind  of   direct  moral  presenta- 
tion of  the  conduct-side  of  life  is  apt  to  be  regarded 
as  more  practical,  simply  because  it  is  more  direct. 
But  the  thought-side  is  also  practical.     As  an  ele- 
ment  in  the   progress  of   religion,  even  of  what  is 
called   practical    religion,  thought    is  eminently  the 
active    power   that    effects  the   progress.     Mankind 
would  now  be  bowing  down  before  idols  of  wood  and 
stone  as  an  act  of  religion,  instead  of  doing  right- 
eousness, had  not  rational  thought  come  in  to  clear 
away  the  superstitions  on  which  idol-worship  rested. 
And  even  at  this  day  there  are  many  superstitious 
beliefs  which,  with  vast    multitudes    of   people,  are 
standing  in  the  way  o*f  their  seeing  that  the  purest 
practical    religion    is    the    doing   of    righteousness. 


342  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

Only  the  dispelling  of  ignorance,  only  the  enlighten- 
ment of  thought,  can  do  away  with  the  worship  of 
beads  and  Bibles,  and  bring  in  the  higher  worship 
that  is  in  spirit  and  truth. 

The  Practicality  of  Thought, —  that,  then,  is  our 
theme  to-day.  Religion  in  its  completed  wholeness 
is  threefold.  It  is  thought,  it  is  sentiment,  it  is 
action.  There  may  be  a  question  whether  it  begins 
with  thought  or  with  sentiment,  but  there  can  be 
no  question  that  its  proper  end  is  action.  My  own 
idea  is  that  the  elements  of  thought  and  sentiment 
appear  together ;  that,  if  what  may  be  called  senti- 
ment, or  feeling,  be  excited  in  the  beginning  of 
religious  development,  whether  in  the  race  or  in 
the  individual,  there  must  immediately  arise  some 
thought,  some  conception,  of  the  object  of  the  feel- 
ing, though  it  may  be  a  very  rude  and  very  inade- 
quate conception.  Or,  if  anything  gives  rise  to 
some  conception  or  thought  of  a  mysterious  power 
external  to  man,  such  as  has  usually  been  the  object 
of  religious  contemplation,  then  of  necessity  some 
feeling  immediately  arises  toward  this  power, —  a 
feeling  corresponding  with  the  thought.  If  the 
thought  be  chiefly  of  a  being  of  terrible  majesty 
and  might,  then  the  feeling  will  be  chiefly  one  of 
fear  and  awe ;  but,  if  the  thought  be  of  a  being 
of  loving  kindness  and  tender  mercy  as  well  as  of 
power,  then  the  feeling  will  partake  largely  of 
gratitude  and  love.  So  these  two,  sentiment  and 
thought,  go  together.  In  the  development  of  relig- 
ion, they  are  simultaneous  and  reciprocal  in  their 
operation  ;    and  action,  which  comes    after,  is    their 


THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  343 

legitimate  product.  Unless  they  result  in  action, 
they  are  sterile,  and  their  existence  is  in  vain.  In 
the  perfection  of  religious  development,  the  three 
elements  are  combined  in  harmonious  proportions. 
In  this  harmonious  combination,  sentiment  is  the 
impulse,  thought  the  guide,  and  action  the  goal. 

In  this  arrangement,  it  will  be  seen  that  thought 
is  the  specially  important  element.  It  is  that  which 
connects  impulse,  which  in  itself  is  blind,  to  its 
proper  consequence  in  deed.  Without  this,  impulse 
might  rush  unguided  to  some  goal  ;  but  it  might  be 
a  goal  having  no  validity  in  the  truth  of  things  or 
in  human  benefit.  If  sentiment  prevail  with  exces- 
sive preponderance  in  religious  experience,  we  have 
that  superlative  emotional  demonstration  which  may 
be  called  the  hysteria  of  religion, —  the  ecstasy, 
trance,  "  slaying  power,"  of  the  revivalistic  meeting, 
where,  for  the  time,  thought  and  reason  and  even 
physical  self-control  are  dethroned,  and  the  resulting 
action  resembles  more  the  incoherent  ravings  of  an 
inebriated  man  or  the  convulsions  of  an  epileptic 
than  the  conduct  of  a  rational  being.  Or,  if  senti- 
ment does  not  preponderate  to  this  excess,  but  still 
too  largely  dominates,  there  results  a  type  of  re- 
ligion which  spends  itself  chiefly  in  emotional 
religious  ceremonies,  and  is  afraid  of  thought  as 
irreligious,  and  does  not  connect  religion  very  dis- 
tinctly with  acts  of  daily  life.  But,  again,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  thought  may  preponderate  too  much  over 
sentiment;  and  then  there  results  a  type  of  religion 
that  may  be  morally  correct  and  philosophically  true, 
and  yet  coldly  moral  and  true, —  a  religion  wanting 


344  '  u  EN  l  \  -FIVE    -I  RMI 

warmth,  enthusiasm,  and  aspiration,  and  hence  apt 
•  connected  with  a  bloodless  and  nerveless  kind 
of  morality.  And,  still  again,  thought  and  senti- 
ment may  both  he  intensely  active;  hut  it  is  narrow 
thought  and  uncultivated  sentiment, —  the  most  mis- 
chievous and  practically  pernicious  of  all  the  possible 
combinations  of  the  constituent  elements  of  religion. 
Hence  come  the  bitter  spirit  and  de<  sectarian- 

ism, bigotry,  persecution,  wars  for  enthroning  beliefs, 
imprisonment  and  slaughter  of  bodies  tor  the  sake 
of  saving  souls.  And  the  remedy  is  always  a  truer 
sentiment,  that  shall  embrace  humanity  as  well  as 
imagined  divinity,  and  a  broader  thought,  that  shall 
give  a  truer  conception  of  divine  being  and  divine 
law.  And,  yet  again,  what  will  seem,  perhaps,  most 
strange  of  all,  and  yet  is  a  very  common  thing 
to  happen,  there  may  be  religious  action  without 
thought  or  sentiment, —  the  result  without  the  I  au 
This  is  where  religious  activity  has  become  merely 
traditional,  formal,  and  ecclesiastical.  The 
have  existed  in  the  past:  the  sentiment  and  the 
thought  were  vital  in  the  minds  of  people  genera- 
tions ago;  and  they  produced  certain  institutions 
and  habits  of  action  which  may  go  on  acting  of 
themselves  and  be  participated  in  by  men  and  women 
who  no  longer  believe  the  thought  nor  feel  the  sen- 
timent. And  there  is  a  good  deal  of  this  kind  of 
religious  action  in  the  world  :  it  is  the  formalism  and 
hypocrisy,  the  crying  evil,  of  instituted  religion. 

Such,  then,  is  the  general  relation  of  these  three 
elements  of  religion  to  each  other  and  to  the  com- 
pleted fulness  of  religion,  whether  historically  in  a 


THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  345 

whole  people  or  in  individual  character.  And  now, 
on  this  general  basis,  I  wish  to  show  how  practically 
necessary  is  thought  in  this  combination  ;  how  that 
element  which  seems  in  itself  to  be  the  most  specu- 
lative is  in  fact  the  most  practically  beneficial  in  the 
result. 

And  first,  to  this  end,  let  us  look  at  the  province 
of  thought  in  the  general  activity  of  human  life  and 
work.  This  age  in  which  we  are  living  is  generally 
styled  a  practical,  utilitarian  age.  It  is  an  age  of  vast 
material  enterprises  and  of  intense  devotion  to  the 
physical  interests  of  the  human  race ;  an  age  of 
commerce,  trade,  mining,  farming,  manufacturing ; 
an  age  of  scientific  discovery  and  invention,  of  mar- 
vellous progress  in  the  useful  arts,  and  of  such  suc- 
cessful appliances  of  inventive  skill  to  supply  the 
needs  of  mankind  as  even  a  hundred1  years  ago 
would  have  been  declared  simply  miraculous.  It  is 
pre-eminently  an  age  of  activity,  and  of  activity  on 
what  would  have  been  called,  in  the  religious  phrase- 
ology of  a  half-century  ago,  the  practical  "worldly" 
side  of  human  life.  Of  course,  the  age  has  other  ac- 
tivities. But  it  is,  by  distinction,  an  age  of  practical 
affairs  more  than  it  is  religious,  more  than  it  is  liter- 
ary, more  than  it  is  philosophical,  more  than  it  is 
poetic  or  musical  or  aesthetic  in  any  form  ;  more 
than  it  is  military,  frequent  and  bloody  as  its  wars 
are  ;  more,  even,  than  it  is  moral  or  philanthropic. 
It  is  a  commercial,  utilitarian,  business-devoted,  sci- 
ence-learning, and  art-inventing  age, —  an  age  of  ac- 
tion and  practicality  per  se.  But  where  is  the  root  of 
this  action  ?     It  is  in  thought.     It  is  in  the  human 


34r»  TWI.M  V-l  I\  I      SI  RMONS 

mind.  The  activity  is  not  blind,  un guided  move- 
ment. If  it  were,  it  would  not  hit  the  mark  of 
complishment  so  generally  and  precisely  as  it  does. 
The  things  achieved  arc  thoughts  in  somebody's 
brains  before  they  are  even  begun.  The  practicality 
in  all  its  phases,  from  the  sailing  <>f  a  ship  t<>  the  dis- 
covery of  a  planet,  is  originated  and  directed  by 
thought.  Thought  is  applying  itself  to  different 
problems  than  used  to  absorb  the  greatest  thinkers, 
but  it  is  thought  none  the  less.  Instead  of  brin_ 
out  a  system  of  theology  like  Calvin's  Institute 
now  brings  out  a  steam  engine.  Instead  of  invent- 
ing a  dogma  for  reconciling  heaven  and  earth  that 
were  never  estranged,  it  now  invents  a  locomotive 
to  go  around  the  earth  and  bring  into  amit\ 
tranged  nations.  Thought  is  more  dispersed  than  it 
used  to  be  in  earlier  ages.  It  is  not  limited  so  much 
to  the  philosopher's  brain  or  to  the  scholar's  stud}-. 
It  stands  with  the  mechanic  at  his  bench.  It  i 
active  in  the  manufacturer's  brain.  It  throbs  in  the 
energy  of  the  great  magnates  of  the  world's  trade. 
It  appears  in  miners  and  engineers,  in  the  discover- 
ers and  inventors,  and  in  a  host  of  practical  workers 
all  through  this  busy  world.  If  the  great  leaders 
of  thought  are  fewer  than  once,  it  is  because  the 
number  of  thinkers  is  greater.  The  thought-army 
is  made  up  of  brigadiers.  It  was  thought  that  tun- 
nelled the  Alps,  and  brought  the  lines  of  excavation 
from  the  opposite  sides  within  an  inch  of  each  other, 
under  the  mighty  mass  of  the  mountain  above.  It 
was  thought  that  scaled  the  Rocky  Mountains  with 
a  railroad  ;  thought  that  put  a  whispering  wire  under 


THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  347 

the  Atlantic,  and  girdled  the  globe  with  an  electric 
language;    thought  that  is  making  night  like  unto 
day  by  the  electric  light ;    thought  that  has  charted 
the  ocean,  and  sails  and  steams  across  it ;  thought 
that  organized  commerce,  banking,  and  government  ; 
in  fine,  it  is  thought  that  is  the  mainspring  of  all  this 
bustling  activity  of  the  human  world.     It  is  thought 
that  guides,  controls,  foresees,  marks  out  the  pathway, 
invents  the  machine,  manages  it  when  made,  devises 
the  instrumentality,  and  holds  it  to  the  purpose  for 
which  it  was  devised.     It  is  thought  applied  to  prac- 
tical problems,  but  it  is  none  the  less  thought..    In- 
deed, it  is   one  of  the   standing  complaints  of    the 
churches   that  the  thought   of  men  is  so  much  ab- 
sorbed in  these  utilitarian  and  materialistic  interests 
of  life  that  little  of  it  is  left  for  the  service  of  relig- 
ion,  so    that  church    pews   are  empty    and   the   old 
creeds  go  begging  for  believers. 

Now,  if  thought  be  so  important  and  fundamental 
an  element  in  the  very  domain  of  these  practical 
affairs  of  life,  much  more  must  it  hold  this  master 
>,sition  in  those  departments  of  life  which  may  be 
called  mental,  moral,  and  religious.  The  great 
thought-producers  of  the  world  have  been  the  in- 
spires of  human  history  and  the  sustainers  of 
human  action.  Socrates,  Plato,  Kant,  were  mainly 
thinkers.  They  spent  their  lives  in  philosophy. 
Yet  their  thoughts  have  been,  and  still  are,  the  sus- 
tenance of  millions  of  minds.  People  who  have 
never  read  a  word  that  they  said  or  wrote  are  yet 
mentally  richer,  and  have  had  their  own  thoughts 
shaped  and  colored  by  the  thoughts  which  such  mas- 


ter  think.  ehind  them.     It 

while  even  for  a  master  mind,  thai 

itating  hold  on 
empyrean  of  the  the 

:  truths 
tific  • 

The  liea  md  the 

imagination  have  alii.  that 

are  immortal.     The 

is  not  the  poetry  in  which  sentii  tea,  but 

that  in  which  the  thought  ifl  enti- 

ment. 

And,   again,    when 
must   n< 
the  mural  law,  thought  is  as  much  the  : 
sentiment    is.      There  ■ntimen' 

• 

this  feeling  can  arise,  thi  mental  |  m  ol 

siime    truth    that    kindles   it.     Behind    I        Golden 
Rule,  ••  1  >o  unto  "th. 
ill)   unt<>  you,"   lies   the 

action, —  the    pel  t  which  1 

demand  from  another  as  my  right    I 

right.      1  'h is  »  the  very  root  «»f  the 

.  of   justice;  and  upon  it   has  been   built,  layer  by 

x,  story  by  story,  the  whole  pr  :n  of 

md  jurisprudence.     It  is  but  a  thought ;  but  it 

is  a  thought  that  susl  >vernment  ol 

the  universe,  and  all  human  governments,  so  far  as 

they   are  stable  and   durable.       And,  in   the    moral 

problems  that  confront  humanity  to-day,  nothin 


THE    PRACTICALITY    01     THOUGHT  349 

more  necessary  than  clear  and  wise  thought  as  a 

tical  element  in  settling  them.  Humane  senti- 
ment is  good,  and  is  needed  ;  but  humane  sentiment 
alone  cannot  effect  a  solution.  Excessive  amiability 
may  be,  indeed,  a  hindrance  to  moral  reform,  grant- 
ing indulgence  where  nature  demands  a  retribution. 
uch  social  problems  as  poverty,  intemper- 
ance, licentiousness,  criminality,  while  love  and  com- 

ion    may  furnish   the   motive    power,  the    utn 
wisdom  of  thought  is  require'!  to  supply  the  reme- 
dial instrumentality. 

When  we  come  to  religion,  the  practical  powei 
thought  is  still  more  strongly  illustrated.  Behind 
all  great  religious  movements  there  have  been  great 
thoughts.  We  greatly  mistake,  if  we  think  that 
Christianity  began  mainly  in  a  fresh  development  <>! 
religious  sentiment,  or  that  its  dominant  feature  was 
a  new  kind  of  "external  religious  action  without  any 
is  in  thought.  Jesus  was  not  pre-eminently  a 
thinker.      lie   produ  ihical    system    of 

thought.  Yet  he  was  one  in  whom  thought,  senti- 
ment, and  action  we  tbined  in  an  exceptional 
>f  harmony.  And  as,  with  reference  to  the 
existing  religion  of  Judaism,  his  action  was  revolu- 
tionary, so  was  his  thought.      1  le  continually  violated 

traditions   and    commandments,   and   taught   men 
He  distinctlyjproclaimed  the  abrogation  of  the 
Jewish  law  ;  and,  in  place  of  its  ceremonial  act 
means  of  securing  peace  and  blessedness,  he  incul- 

1  the  idea  of  the  doing  of  righteousness.  The 
Jewish  Messianic  conception  he-  adopted,  but  trans- 
formed it,  so  that  it  became   almost   unrecognizable, 


350  TWENTY-FIVE    SERW 

with   thoughts   of  his   own.     In    fine,   it    was   from 
such  ideas  as  these  which  Jesus  preached,  and  which 
Paul  and  the  other  apostles  worked  over,  with  la 
additions,  that  there  came  that  great  dramatic 
tem  of  thought  which  was  the  strong  motive  power 
in  the  organization  of    primitive  Christianity, —  the 
scheme  of  a  second  coming  of  Christ   in  the  clo 
of  heaven,  and  of  a  new-made  earth  and         '       ianic 
kingdom,  in    which  Jesus   was  to  reign   personally 

over  the  living  and  risen  saints.       Here  was  a  system 

of  belief,  a  creed,  which,  though  it  proved  to  be  I 

in    form,   held    thoughts   which   had    a   mighty   sway 
over  the  unlettered  people  of  that  time. 

Look  at  more  recent  history.  The  Protestant 
Reformation  had  its  origin  in  the  awakening  of  the 
human  mind  to  a  consciousness  of  its  very  right  to 
think  as  against  the  authority  of  the  Roman  priest- 
hood. And,  when  Luther  came,  he  rallied  the  re- 
formers around  the  idea  of  the  Bible  as  the  word  oi 
God,  and  each  man  to  read  and  interpret  it  for  him- 
self, as  against  the  idea  that  the  priest,  or  even  the 
pope  voiced  the  word  of  God.  Behind  the  Ri 
mation  was  this  great  central  thought, —  the  Bible, 
and  the  Bible  only,  the  rule  of  faith  and  practice, 
the  individual  reader  of  it  being  his  own  interpreter. 
It  is  a  thought  which  later  thought  has  had  to 
correct ;  yet,  for  the  time,  it  was  a  great  step  for- 
ward in  intellectual  development,  and  held  the  seecl- 
sxain  from  which  the  great  Protestant  movement 
has  grown  and  spread  until  it  has  passed  beyond  the 
limits  of  a  religion  to  become  a  civilization.  Cal- 
vinism, again,  derived  its  power  to  shape  intellects 


I  HE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  351 

ally  and  morally  the  Protestant  world,  for  two  and  a 
half  centuries,  from  its  thought,— not  from  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  its  thought,  but  because  it  had  a  defi- 
nite, clean-cut,  logically  welded  system  of  thought, 
put  into  words  that  the  common  mind  could  under- 
stand.    Accept  its  premises,  and  you  went  on  irre- 
sistibly to    its    conclusions ;    and    it    was    not    until 
within  the  present  century  that  its  premises  were  to 
any  great   extent  denied   within   the   limits    of    the 
Protestant  Church.     This  system  of  thought,  which 
became  the  staple  doctrine  of  the  pulpits   and   the 
mental   and   spiritual   food   of  the    pews,  and   which 
was  meant  to   be  accepted  on  its  logical  merits  by 
the  individual  men  and  women  who  heard  and  read 
it,  trained  people  to   intellectual  and   moral   robust- 
ness.     Whatever  may  be   said  of    its  effect  on  the 
heart,  it  was  a  vigorous  discipline  of  the  mind  and 
the  conscience.     By  close  alliance  with  the  doctrine 
of  civil  liberty  and  political  independence,  it  shaped 
the  polity  of  States,  settled  New  England,  and  be- 
came   one    of  the  strongest  elements  in  practically 
moulding  the  political  and  social  life  of  this  North 
American  continent. 

The  practical  power  of  thought  has  been  shown 
again  in  the  progress  of  Protestantism  and  in  the 
overthrow  of  Calvinism.  As  Protestantism  had  its 
origin  in  the  awakening  consciousness  within  the 
human  mind  of  its  right  to  think,  so  nearly  every 
new  denomination  or  sect  or  religious  movement 
that  has  come  in  the  course  of  Protestant  history 
has  sprung  out  of  and  been  rallied  around  some  new 
thought.     The    thought    sometimes    has    been    poor 


and   narrow;   yet   it  has   at  least  shown   the   indepen- 

e  of  the  thinker,  and  1  hi  to  win  it 

lowers  by  appealing  to  their  thii 
ce  of  Protestantism  is  mai 

es  in  the  progi  bt, —  wta 

new  statement  of  truth,  some  i  old 

truth,  some  modification  ol  trine,  has  <  hal- 

id  the  judgmenl  of  the  old  church,  and,  if  not 

pted    there,  I  ich. 

The    I'nivers  ilist   and    I 

(1  ( 'alvinism  on  inal 

poinl         I 

!  with  two  new  the   new  u 

mark   to  which   then' 

the  conflict  did  net  then  end.      I  '  of  the  new 

;  denomi* 
»ns  that  until  t! 

mmunicat  their 

own  creeds.     Unitarianism,  in  turn,  after  i; 
tion  from  ( Orthodoxy,  1"  delusively  ethical 

and  formal.  It  seemed  to  have  spent  its  spiritual 
energy  in  a  and  had  n<>  system  I 

philosophy  of  its  own.  Complaint  was  made  that  its 
sermons  wer<  homilies  enough  on  the  plain, 

(•very-day  duties   of  life,   but    arid   and   cold,  without 
spiritual  enthusiasm  or  sustenance.     The  Trans 
dental   movement  came  with   it>  spiritual   philosophy 
and  fresh   enthusiasm  for  humanity;   and   Unitarian- 
Ism   at  first    fought    it,  persecuted    its  .  not 

by  the  fagot  and  thumbscrew,  but  by  ways  that 
were  effectual  to  remove  some  of  them  from  their 
pulpits.     Vet,  in   moving  them   from   Unitarian   pul- 


THE    PRACTICALITY    OF    THOUGHT  353 

pits,  it  lifted  them  —  like  Emerson  and  Parker  — 
to  become  teachers  of  the  world  ;  and  Unitarianism, 
to  a  large  extent,  though  not  as  yet  very  graciously, 
has  finally  accepted,  to  save  itself  from  inanition  and 
death,  the  very  philosophy  of  religion  which  it  had 
tried  to  cast  out  with  these  heretics. 

And,  to-day,  it  is  thought  again  that  is  newly  mov- 
ing the  religious  world, —  thought  that  has  sprung 
from  modern  science  and  follows  its  method.  The 
new  religious  philosophy,  that  is  certainly  coming  in 
the  old  philosophy  of  supernaturalism  in  all 
its  forms,  is  not  yet  definitely  systematized.  But  it 
is  in  the  air.  Its  power  is  felt,  more  or  less,  in  all 
the  churches.  It  is  newly  writing  the  creeds.  It 
moulds  the  Biblical  criticism  of  the  Scotch  Presby- 
terian, Robertson  Smith;  it  revises  the  Bible  in 
the  Church  of  England  and  in  the  very  heart  of 
American  Orthodoxy;  it  rewrites  the  Bible  from 
the  Stand-point  of  rational  historical  criticism  in  the 
Dutch  school  of  theologians;  it  is  remoulding  the 
time-honored  institutions  of  France;  it  is  even  felt 
by  the   pope   in   the   Vatican,  and    keeps   him   on    the 

eve  ot  flight  from  a  rebellious  populace.     It  appi 

in  the  secular  journals  and  magazines  as  well  as  in 
the  religious;  in  literature  and  in  poetry  quite  as 
much  as  in  the  new  treatises  of  theology.  It  .spe- 
cially is  evident  in  science  and  in  a  broader  social 
philosophy.  It  is  in  far-off  India  and  Japan,  and 
even  in  stable  and  stagnant  China  and  in  fatalistic 
Mohammedanism.  Thus,  everywhere  the  new  relig- 
ious thought  is  in  the  mental  atmosphere  of  the  age, 
dispelling   the  darkness  of    superstitions,  scattering 


354  TWENTY-FIVE    SERM 

old  errors,  bringing  in  the  light  of  larger  truths. 
And  everywhere  it  is  shaping  the  faith  of  the  future, 
—  a  faith  which,  when  it  comes,  will  be  the  most 
practical  of  all  faiths,  lifting  the  human  mind  into 
a  grander  and  surer  trust,  laying  upon  the  human 
heart  and  conscience  a  deeper  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity for  the  world's  welfare,  summoning  States  to  a 
finer  justice,  trade  to  a  stricter  honesty,  and  welding 
society  into  a  nobler  bond  of  human  brotherhood,  in 
which,  at  last,  human  shall  mean  humane. 

January  zz,  \ 


XXIV. 
THE    GLORIOUS    GOD. 

"  God's  glory  is  a  wondrous  thing, 
Most  strange  in  all  its  ways, 
And,  of  all  things  on  earth,  least  like 
What  men  agree  to  praise." 

Tins  little  verse  was  the  seed-text  from  which  this 
discourse  grew  ;  and  I  cannot,  perhaps,  better  intro- 
duce my  subject  than  by  telling  you  just  how  the 
erowth  started.  The  verse  is  one  of  five  which 
stand  together  in  our  Hymn  Book;  but  those  five 
are  selected  from  a  much  larger  number,  and  the 
hymn  to  which  they  belong  was  written  by  the 
devout  Roman  Catholic,  Faber.  Though  the  gen- 
eral sentiment  of  the  hymn  is  one  to  which  our 
hearts  might  respond,  there  are  in  it  certain  ways 
of  explaining  religious  truths  (I  refer  more  especially 
to  the  whole  hymn  as  Faber  wrote  it)  which  would 
hardly  accord  with  the  thought  of  those  of  us  who 
are  accustomed  to  join  in  these  Sunday  services 
here.  And,  in  looking  over  the  pages  of  our  book  to 
select  hymns  for  our  weekly  services,  I  have  some- 
times passed  by  this  fine  hymn,  which  for  its  general 
sentiment  I  wanted  to  take,  because  this  verse  in 
particular  seemed  to  be  contrary  to  my  customary 
teachings.     We   believe,  do   we    not,  in    a   rational, 


I   \  1  Y-l   1\  1.     -1   KM*  »NS 

natural    religion,    immediately   connected    with    the 

tical,  intelligible,  every-day  duties  ami   dis] 
tions  <>t'   mankind, —  a   religion   chief!)    synonymous 

with    plain,  simple   g  ;   with 

good    efforts,    a:  with    know'., 

of    ami    obedience    to    the    natural    laws    that 
stamped  upon,  and  the  uplifting 

work   within,  the   world  of   matter   ami   the   world   oi 
man;    and    sueh    obedience,  "ions 

and  good  deeds,  which,  in  our  wa)  of  thinking,  are 
the   best    manifestation   of    divil  r   in    human- 

ity, it    appears   to   us,    men   in   general   d< 
]. raise,"  when  they  clearly  see  and    understand  them. 
This   verse,  on   the  contrary,  seems   to  inculcate   the 
idea  of  religion  as  trange  and  foreign  to 

man's  natural  experience  imething  to  come  by 

mysterious    and     spe  •    which    the    natural 

mi  cannot  be  expected  to  comprehend  nor  even 
to  praise.  Its  key-thought,  apparently,  is  that  old 
conception  of  Orthodoxy,  that  G  1  revelation  of 
himself,  not  only  in  history,  but  to  the  individual 
soul,  is  miraculous, —  an  interposed  visitation  by  the 
Holy  Spirit  for  purposes  of  conversion,  and  in 
specially  providential  ways  not  to  be  tin  I  nor 

judged  by  human  reason.  And,  very  likely,  some 
such  thought  as  this  was  in  Fabcr's  mind  when  he 
wrote  the  verse.  But  Faber  was  a  true  poet.  And 
in  every  true  poet,  religious  or  other,  there  is  a  pro- 
founder  meaning  than  can  be  translated  by  any 
prose  rendering.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  many  of 
the  old  hymns  and  anthems,  which  conform  verbally 
to  a  theology  which  we  discard,  may  yet  do  service 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  357 

in  the  expression  of  a  feeling  that  goes  deeper  than 
theology.  And  last  Sunday,  as  I  read  this  hymn  to 
you  to  be  sung,  choosing  it  then  as  I  had  once  or 
twice  before  with  a  silent  protest  against  a  portion 
of  it,  another  possible  meaning  of  this  special  verse 
came  to  me,  and  therewith  the  thought-kernel  of  this 
discourse, —  which  I  bring  you  to-day, —  over  which 
I  have  ventured  to  write  the  words,  "The  Glorious 
God." 

And  yet,  after  writing  the  words  there,  I  shrink 
from  the  theme.  Shall  any  one  venture  to  sound 
the  depths  of  that  mystery  of  infinite  being  in  which 
we,  and  this  universe  and  all  things  in  it,  live  and 
move  and  have  our  being?  Shall  any  finite  mind 
have  the  audacity  to  attempt  to  portray  the  ways, 
the  attributes,  the  aims  of  Infinite  Mind  ?  attempt 
to  talk  of  an  existence  which,  by  the  very  fact  that 
we  call  it  infinite,  we  admit  to  be  boundless,  inca- 
pable of  being  described,  incapable  of  being  compre- 
hended ?  Does  not  the  old  text  meet  us,  to  forbid 
the  essay  at  the  outset, —  "Touching  the  Almighty, 
we  cannot  find  him  out  "  ?  We  can  understand  how 
the  believer  in  a  miraculous  revelation  of  Deity,  the 
believer  in  a  scheme  of  theology  which  is  alleged  to 
contain  a  celestially  illuminated  chart  of  God's 
entire  nature  and  dealings  with  mankind,  should 
venture  to  speak  of  his  power  and  glory  as  some- 
thing which  man  can  define  and  describe.  But  how 
can  one  to  whose  thought  Deity  is  and  must  be,  by 
the  very  necessity  of  the  case,  largely  hidden,  one 
to  whom  infinite  Being  means  literally  and  actually 
unbounded  and  illimitable  being, —  and  the  unfathom- 


358  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMl 

able  unknown  must  ever  be  more  than  the  known, — 
how  can  such  a  one  dare  to  attempt  any  expression 
of  such  a  thought  as  the  glory  «»t"  God? 

Hut,  on  the  other  hand,  if  we  can  retain,  with  the 
natural  exercise  of  our  faculty  of  reason,  anything 
of   Hie  religious   sentiment  ;  if  w<  to  define  ; 

ion  as  anything  more  than  or  different  from  morality, 
then  it  is  necessary  that  there  should  remain  some 
such  thought  as  this;  and,  if  the  thought,  then  also 
some  possible  way  of  giving  it  utterance  Words 
in. iv  not  utter  it  fully, —  this  thought  of  the  possible 
divine  glory  :  music  may  often  sound  its  depths 
deeper    than    words.      \Yt    words    may  the 

interpretation,  even  though  not  able  to  make  it 
complete.  And  at  this  day,  when  positive  knowl- 
edge is  our  boast  and  the  tendency  is  so  stroi 
confine  thought  to  the  limits  of  the  world  of  phe- 
nomena; at  this  day,  when  we  go  to  the  scien 
and  the  cyclopaedias  to  explain  all  the  mysteries  of 
the  world-forces,  and  the  theologies  in  which  we 
were  bred  arc  vanishing  like  the  fairy  stories  of  our 
childhood,  and  what  we  once  read  as  history  is 
turning  into  uncertain  tradition  and  legend  and 
myth;  at  this  day,  when  the  archaeologists  and 
biologists  are  following  back  the  trail  of  unbroken 
evolution  in  the  history  of  man  and  the  history  of 
the  planet  he  occupies,  for  vast  ages  back  of  the  time 
where  we  used  to  put  creation,  and  the  words  "he- 
redity "  and  "  law  "  and  "  force  "  are  applied  as  labels 
to  whole  regions  of  life  formerly  thought  to  be  under 
the  direct  control  of  a  personal  deity  ;  at  this  day, 
too,  when,  on  the  other  hand,  what  cannot  be  thus 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  359 

studied  and  explained,  mapped  and  labelled  as  posi- 
tive knowledge,  is  apt  to  be  put  aside  as  unworthy  of 
consideration  among  practical  men  and  women, — 
as  a  country  not  only  unexplored,  but  unexplorable, 
not  only  unknown,  but  unknowable, —  amid  such  ten- 
dencies of  thought,  there  is  some  danger  that  not 
only  much  of  the  mystery,  but  much  of  the  beauty, 
poetry,  and  power  of  uplifting  sentiment,  which  have 
been  associated  with  religious  ideas,  will  also  vanish. 
I  think  it  very  necessary,  therefore,  that  those  of 
us  who  accept  the  results  of  the  new  science  and  of 
the  new  methods  of  studying  man's  history  on  the 
earth  should  be  ready  to  set  forth,  if  we  can,  any 
truer  and  grander  thought  of  Deity  which  may  have 
come  to  us  in  lieu  of  the  old  theological  conceptions 
which  science  has  displaced. 

And  we  may  say,  in  the  first  place,  that  our 
thought  of  the  divine  power  and  -lory  meets  the 
test  of  the  verse  that  is  our  text  in  this, —  that  it  is, 
of  all  things,  "least  like"  what  men  in  general, 
thinking  of  that  power  and  glory,  "agree  to  praise." 
What  is  the  idea  of  God  held  by  the  vast  majority 
of  the  people  of  Christendom  ?  It  is  the  idea  of  an 
Almighty  Being  seated  in  majesty  and  magnificence 
on  a  throne  above  the  skies,  after  the  pattern  of  a 
human  sovereign,  touched  with  paternal  benignity, 
but  ruling  the  world  from  that  distant  heavenly 
throne  by  a  double  system  of  laws  and  special  provi- 
dences. It  is  of  a  being  who  made  this  universe  in 
the  first  place  either  out  of  his  own  nature,  calling 
the  very  atoms  of  matter  into  existence,  or  out  of 
material  atoms  existing  co-eternally  with  himself, — 


360 

building  it  tl 

machine,     and  who  then  im|  n  it  the  I 

and  ep   it   h 

peopled  it  with  livinj 

his   cclcsti.il 

\ 
tions of  supernatural  power.     I' 
primitive  irth  in  tl 

walked  upon  its  surl 

mmanded  them  wh.it  t 

''MTU 

on  this  cart;  human 

from    Iki  1    then    lived    ' 

put 
t"  death  on   a 

where    he    remains   |  |  mankind 

as  death    shall   .summon    the 

the  central  conception  by  the 

great  majority  "t    t  populal  the 

earth.      Ami     this,    with    lt-s    vai 
creative  and 

nificence,  of  arbitral  ent  mingled  with  1 

rial   compassion,   of   almighty  will   and   all-knowing 
Is  what  the  mass  of  tin-  in  Chrisl 

Ltions    '  •  "    in    their   worship. 

go  into  other  religions,  the  mor- 

phic  idea  of  God    prevails.      It 

powerful   ruler,   a  king,  at    '  •■   lather; 

God,  too.  who  once   lived  on  the  earth  in  the  form  of 
man,  or  perhaps    even    lives    th  lay   dike  the 

d  Lama  of  Thibet),  surrounded  with  power  and 
arrayed  in  the  habiliments  of  glory. 


i  in:  glorious  GOD  361 

But  the  divine  glory  that  we  would  seek  is,  of  all 
things  on  earth,  least  like  what  these  people  have  in 
mind  as  God.  We  do  not  look  for  it  in  the  god 
Jupiter,  nor  the  god  Jehovah,  nor  the  god  Osiris,  nor 
the  god  Thor,  nor  the  god  Brahma,  nor  the 
Jesus.     All  these  were  honest   and  sincere  but  in- 

tual  attempts   to  express  the  inexpressible, 
define  the  [indefinable,  to  personify  an  existence  and 
power    which    in    its    essence    must    forever    remain 
above  all  human  conceptions  of  personality.     They 

served     their     historic     time     ami     purpose.       They 
marked  some  aspect  and  direction  of  human  thought 

in  h  to  grapple  with  the  problem  of  the  ulti- 

mate cause  of  things.  They  were  reaches  after  the 
Divine,  approaches  toward  it,  but  none  of  them  re- 
ed the  fulness  of  its  -lory.  In  all  the  religions, 
and  in  Christendom  especially,  people  have  been  tOO 
much  wont  to  glorify  their  own  metaphysical  specu- 
lations about  Deity,  their  own  mental  1  on<  eptions  of 
him  ;   to   take  tl  1  »  1,v 

the  actual  revelations  of  divine  powe  OH  right 

around   them.      What    a  vast  amount  of   religious  en- 
and   devotion,    for    instance,  has    been    spent    in 
rig  forth  the  glory  of  the  Divine  nature  and  work 
ording  to  the  purely  metaphysical  conception  oi 

the  triune  personality  of  the  Godhead  !  The  ; 
tion  may  be  safely  risked  that  no  person  ever  suc- 
led  in  getting  a  logical,  rational  idea  of  this  doc- 
trine. Indeed,  the  last  resort  of  all  argument  upon 
it  has  always  been  that  it  is  a  doctrine  not  to  be 
understood  by  reason,  but  to  be  accepted  by  faith. 
But  the  time  has  passed  when  any  considerable  num- 


TWENTY-FIVE    51  RMONS 

ber  of  thoughtful  minds,  awake  to  the  thought  of 
this  new  age  in  which  we  are  living,  can  be  content 
to  look  for  the  divine  glory  in  these  raetaphys 

creeds  wherein  men  have  put  their  own  conceptions 
of  Deity;  or   in   any  names,  howi  I  and  an- 

cient, which    have    survived'  from    man'-  but 

futile  effort  to  define  ami  personify  the  power  in 
which  and   by  which   and  amid  which  he  telt  that  his 

own  being  was  embosomed  ami  kept  in  existent 

"The  glorious  God,"  —  where,  then,  shall  man 
look  for  the  living  counterpart,  if  there  be  any,  of 
this  thought?  Where  hut  in  the  universe  —  this 
universe  of  nature  and  man  —  which  is  the  only 
sible  presentation  of  divine  power  that  comes  within 
our  knowledge?  This  universe  is  itself  the  shining 
garment  by  which  the  divine  power  is  made  visible. 
While  people  have  been   looking  into  the  past 

and  trying  to  keep  hold  of  their  belief  in  (~i>n\  by 
holding  to  the  creeds  and  conceptions  of  him  that 
were  framed  centurie  md  savin.:;'  to  themselves 

and  repeating  in  their  churches,  "  What  a  glory  was 
then  revealed  to  the  world!'*  lo,  here  is  the  same 
God,  existing  apparently  as  he  has  always  existed, 
working  as  he  has  always  worked,  right  in  the  famil- 
iar scenes  of  nature  and  human  life,  close  around  us 
every  day.  It  is  not  because  the  divine  glory  is  so 
far  off  that  it  is  becoming  dimmed,  but  we  miss 
seeing  it  because  it  is  so  near.  Let  us  lift  two  or 
three  of  the  curtains  from  these  hiding-places  among 
the  every-day  facts  of  our  lives, —  just  lifting  a  little 
the  drapery  of  these  very  phenomena  with  which 
science  deals,  and  in   the  knowledge  of   which   we 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD 


363 


have  such  an  advantage  over  the  ancients;  and 
because  of  our  knowledge  of  which  it  is  sometimes 
boasted  that  we  have  no  occasion  for  any  God  at  all 
this  side  of  that  curtain  of  the  absolutely  unknow- 
able which  can  never  be  lifted  at  all.  If  I  mis" 
take  not,  we  shall  find  the  glory,  "  wondrous "  and 
"  strange  in  all  its  ways,"  shining  all  around  us,  just 
behind  and  through  the  most  known  and  familiar 
things. 

Every  year,  before  the  winter  has  loosed   its  icy 
grip  upon  the  earth,  you   begin   to   see   the   animal 
wonder   of    a    new  spring-time.      Under    sheltering 
fences  or  the  sunny  side  of   your  houses,  and  close 
up  to  the  warm  stones  of  your  doorstep,  which  have 
been  heated  all  day  in  the  March  sun,  you  may  have 
.seen  the  grass   springing  up  and  putting  on  its  dress 
of   living    green.      It    was    the    first    streaks   of    the 
dawn  of  that  coming  glory  of  life  and  color,  of  leaf 
and    flower    and  fruit,    which    in    a   tew    months    are 
spread    over    all    this    northern    zone    of     earth.      It 
comes  so  steadily  and  surely,  ami  we  have  heroine  so 
accustomed  to  its  coming  year  after  year,  that  we  do 
not   see   the   wondrousness   of  it  as  we  should,  were 
our  eyes  to  behold   it   for  the  first  time.     Could  we 
see  it   for   the    first   time,    indeed,    we    should    stand 
amazed,  if   not  worshipful,   before  the   spectacle   of 
the  awakening  life  and  beauty.     And  you  say,  too, 
that  you  know  the  cause  of  it, —  that  the  earth  in  its 
annual  circuit   round  the  sun  turns  at  this  season  its 
northern  hemisphere,  by  reason  of  the  angle  between 
its  equator  and  the  ecliptic,  more  directly  to  the  sun's 
rays,   and    hence    receives   more  of   the   sun's  heat. 


TW] 

Hut    the  Is"    none  the  less  wonderful,  th 

It 
is.  to  begin   witl  that 

that  luminary  in  the 
miles  mould  be  t! 

this  What 

glory  ?     Hut  the  pro 

• 
or  deities  which  the  old  myl 
or  st 

.  is  thai  '  ;>  linked 

with  the  sun  ?     Met  hani 
it  wi  thin 

nd  throu 
stellar  S] 

duct  r  of  both  light  and  heal 
mode  of  motion.     In   the  sun, 
the  constant  mi  >1  nstituenl 

motioi  at  — 

to  the  conti  I  the  ether,  which  an 

to  vibrating,  and   these  hand   it 
next,  and  th  the  next  >n,   until, 

cisely  as  motion  is  communicated  through  a  whole 

row  of   marbles    which    .1  I  one  end,  the 

I  of   the  sun  is  communicated  through  the  nil 
two   millions  of   miles   of   the  vibratory   .  I    the 

samer  web  of  ether,  and  strik< 
touches  the  dead-lookin  I    in    th'- 

below  it.     And.   when   the   sun's    r  ime    suf- 

ficiently vertical  to  make  this  touch  powerful  enough, 
it  starts  that  activity  in  the  root  which  soon  shows 


1111.    GLORIOUS    GOD  3^5 

in  the  green  blade  above  and  harbingers  the 
spring.  It  sets  an  energy  to  work  in  those  rootlets 
by  which  they  seize  from  the  earth  and  air  just  the 
chemical  particles  needed  to  build  that  green  Leaf  of 

grass  ;  and  these  particles  then  are  sent  upward  in 
the  sap  by  the  principle  of  a  suction  pump,  to  be 
sted  and  separated  by  the  leaf  itself. 
1  this  is  an  epitome  of  what  the  sun  is  doing 
by  its  magic  art  at  every  spring-time  over  all  the 
pause  of  the  meadows  and  in  every  forest,  every 
shrub  and  tree  and  bud,  all  round  the  globe.  But 
more     than     this  ;     the    sun    lias    been    scientifically 

shown  to  be  ily  the  annual  renewer  and  pre- 

scrVl  i  ible  life  of   the  earth,  but  the 

source  of  all  life,  animal  as  well  stable,  and  ol 

all    physical    power    and    beauty,   that   are    anywhere 

manj  this  earth.     It  is  Tyndall,  remembering 

the  law  of  the  correlation  i  ■  thls 

immedial  the  sun's  heat,  who  says :  "  The 

8un  the  whole  vegetal  d,  and  through  it 

the  animal  ;  the  lilies  of   the    held  are  his  workman- 
ship,   the    verdure   of    the    meadows,    and    the   cattle 
upon   a    thousand    hills.      He   forms   the   muscle,    he 
urges   the    blood,  he    builds    the  brain.  ...  He  builds 
the  forest   and  hews  it  down,  the  power  which  raised 
the    tree  and  which  wields  the  axe  being  one  and  the 
same.      The   clover    sprouts   and    blossoms,    and    the 
the  of  the  mower  swings,  by  the  operation  ol  the 
ie  force.     The  sun  digs  the  ore  from  our  mines; 
he   rolls   the   iron;    he  rivets  the  plates  ;  he  boils  the 
water  ;  he  draws  the   train.  .  .  .  There    is  not  a  ham- 
mer raised,  a  wheel  turned,  or  a  shuttle  thrown,  that 


366  TWE.vn  -I  I VI.    SERMONS 

i^  not  raised  and  turned  and  thrown  by  the  mid." 
Well  may  this  enthusiastic  devotee  "t'  science  add  : 
"  Presented  rightly  to  the  mind,  the  discoveries  and 
generalizations  of  modern  science  constitute  a  | 
more  sublime  than  has  ever  yet  been  addressed  to 
the  intellect  and  imagin  ition  of  man.  The  natural 
philosopher  of  to-day  may  dwell  amid  conceptions 
which  beggar  those  of  Milton."  And  to  this  I  may 
add  that,  though  Milton's  conceptions  were  theo- 
logical and  these  are  scientific,  these  are  none  the 
less  concerned  with  Divine  things.  What  is  behind 
this  glory  of  multitudinous  life  that  marches  over 
the  earth  with  every  spring?  Have  we  reached 
its  primal  source  in  the  sun  ?  Nay  :  the  sun  is  hut 
the  shadow  of  some  power  older  and  mightier  still. 
The  sun  is  hut  one  of  many  millions  of  suns,  each 
with  its  family  of  planets,  which  it  warms  and  lights 
and  peoples  with  life,  and  arms  with  power.  We 
should  have  to  lift  the  whole  curtain  of  the  starry 
heavens  to  behold  the  revelation  of  the  inconceiva- 
ble glory  of  which  the  sun  is  hut  one  ray. 

Let  us  lift  aDOther  of  these  curtains  of  phenom- 
enal facts  in  the  domain  of  positive  knowledge. 
Many  of  you,  I  hope,  have  read,  some  perhaps  have 
heard,  that  incomparable  sermon  by  our  friend, 
William  C.  Gannett,  on  "The  Treasures  of  the 
Snow,"  —  one  of  the  four  miracles  of  the  year,  he 
calls  it.  You  who  have  heard  it,  or  you  who  have 
read  it,  know  with  what  exquisite  poetic  touch  he 
unlocks  the  snow-flake,  and  tells  what  may  there  be 
see  minder  the  powerful  microscope,  or  is  scientifi- 
cally  inferred  from  what  the  microscope    discloses. 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  367 

Yet,  exquisite  in  poetic  feeling  and  expression  as  is 
his  description,  the  poetry,  beauty,  and  wonder  are 
all  in  the  simple  facts  themselves.  The  dryest 
chronicles  of  science  tell  them  all, —  how  every 
tiniest  snow-flake  is  made  up  of  crystals  which  are 
put  together  in  upwards  of  a  thousand  different 
varieties  of  form  :  in  prisms,  three-sided  and  six- 
sided  ;  in  pyramids,  and  in  prisms  capped  with  pyra- 
mids ;  in  star-shapes,  the  lines  radiating  from  a 
centre  of  glory,  star  sometimes  within  star,  and 
these  within  a  third  and  a  fourth  ;  in  prisms  capped 
with  stars  at  both  ends  ;  in  fern  shapes,  with  all  the 
varieties  that  are  found  among  ferns  in  the  forests. 
But  through  all  this  mingling  of  different  forms 
there  is  no  disorder,  no  misfit.  The  lines,  the  joints, 
the  angles,  are  all  drawn  with  mathematical  preci- 
sion. No  deft  fingers  of  the  most  skilled  and  patient 
workman  in  China  can  copy  their  exactness.  And 
through  all  the  variety  there  is  identity,  too.  There 
is  one  mathematical  law  that  pervades  the  whole 
structure.  To  quote  now  from  my  friend  :  "  Snow- 
nature  is  bound  by  a  law  of  sixes.  The  sides  of 
every  prism  and  pyramid  meet  at  one  angle, —  that 
of  sixty  degrees  or  its  multiples  ;  the  rays  of  every 
star  diverge  at  that  one  angle  ;  every  vein  upon 
those  little  fern  leaves  joins  its  stem  at  that  one 
angle  or  its  multiples.  The  snow-stars  are  all  six- 
rayed  or,  rarely,  twelve  ;  the  centres  all  hexagonal. 
Watch  the  flakes  of  a  whole  winter's  storms,  climb 
Chimborazo,  go  to  the  pole,  or  make  your  mimic 
snow-storm  for  yourself  inside  a  chemist's  bottle, — 
never  will  you  find  a  finished  star  with  five  rays  or 


with  seven,  <>r  with  that  law  of  th  ken. 

The   rays   them  are   broken,  but   nei 

tive  law.     Bruised,  shattered,  huddled  together, 
the  snow-flak  i  us  ;   but,  through  all  br 

shatter,  thai  upon  the 

that  they  are  born  and  live  and  Well  may  my 

friend    add,  "  Is    it    not    very  im 

awe    even, —  these    tnathem  :  led  down  t- I  the 

microscopic   measurements,  ition 

<»t'  the   universe   laid  thus  upon  its  invisi 

Surely,  somt  power  has  ii  I  only  in  the 

of   the   storm,  hut  in  this 

single  snow-flake  th.a  falls  at  our  fee:  or  that  i 

away  unseen  in  the  air. 

Shall  we  lift  another  curtain  on  a  somewhat  dii 
ent    scene  f      Look,    then,    at    the    cell    from    which 
comes    all    animal    life.      In    its  riginal 

there  is  nothing  aguish  whether  bird  <>r  : 

or  man   is  to  come  from   it      What   shall  i 

ds   on   some   hidden  ton:.  rinciple   in    il 

inherited  from  its  ancestry,  and  upon  the  environ- 
ment to  which  it  i-  I  d  in  its 
ment.  Suppose  it  i>  I  me  human.  It  then 
draws  to  itself  in  time,  by  a  mechanism  which  man's 
inventive  genius  may  wonder  at,  hut  cannot  im 
the  materials  for  building  that  ni  isummate 
of  ad  nature's  structures,  the  human  body.  The 
animal,  vegetable,  and  mineral  worlds  are  drawn 
upon  for  tribute  to  build  it.  But,  beyond  all  animal 
structures  before  it,  this  human  body  becomes  a 
thinker.  Its  brain  is  not  simply  used  instinctively 
to  push  its  own  fortunes  in  the  struggle  for  a  merely 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  369 

animal  existence,  but  it  becomes  an  instrument  of 
conscious  reflection  upon  the  very  work  and  purpose 
of  nature  itself  in  bringing  it  into  being.  It  dares 
even  to  assert  —  this  human  brain  — that  it  sees 
nature's  aim,  understands  the  intelligence  that  is 
impressed  on  the  snow-flake  and  planted  in  the  seed 
and  that  struggles  through  all  the  graceful  or  un- 
couth forms  of  animal  life;  and  it  has  the  audacity 
—  this  human  brain  — to  say  further,  "  I  can  help  to 
complete  this  plan  :  I  see  that  mathematics  in  the 
snow-flake  means  the  law  of  justice  in  mankind  ; 
that  order  in  the  material  universe  means  morality 
in   human   SO  that   the   relation   of    mutual  de- 

pendence and  helpfulness  evident  between  the  forces 
of  nature  means  brotherhood  among  men."'  And 
thus  this  human  brain,  whose  pedigree  thirt)  years 
before  we  could  not  distinguish  in  the  cell  nor  whose 
future  prophesy,  becomes,  under  the  laws  and  forces 
of   its   own   existence.  Dot   only  a   thinker,  but  a  doer 

of  righteousness.     Here  it   becomes  a  Plato,  there 

a  Washington,  and  there  again  a  Jesus.  And,  in 
i  of  humbler  men  and  women,  it  manifests  itself 
in  deeds  of  loving-kindness  and  tender  mercies.  It 
is  a  builder  of  states,  a  ruler  of  nations,  a  creator  of 
the  arts  of  civilization.  It  discovers  the  secrets  of 
nature,  learns  the  management  of  her  forces,  edu- 
cates and  transmits  its  own  power,  organizes  philan- 
thropy for  the  improvement  and  preservation  of  the 
race  to  which  it  belongs.  The  potent  life-forces 
hidden  in  that  tiny  cell  have  unfolded  into  a  power 
and  glory  that  may  well  be  called  Godlike  in  their 
character. 


370  TWENTY-FIVE    si.kM 

Let   us  draw  aside  yet  another  veil  in  the  v. 
scientific   fact,  and   one   behind    which  IS  promised  a 
near  view  —  almost,  indeed,  a  veritable  revelation  — 
of  the  central   mystery  of  life  itself   in  its  mosl 
mental   forces.      A   few  .  ientific  jour- 

nals were  thrilling  with  fresh  interest  over  a  new 
discovery.  It  seemed  as  if,  at  last,  human  research, 
through  the  agency  of  the  microscope,  were  to  be 

rewarded  with  a  sight  of  the  primordial  substance 
in  which  all  organic  life  had  begun,  and  which  is 
the  necessary  substratum  of  all  continued  vitality. 
Protoplasm  was  the  word  coined  t«>  name  this  won- 
derful   and   unique    form    of  matter,  which   appe 

arry  in  itself  the  "  promise  and  potency  "  of  all 
modes  of  terrestrial  life.  Let  us  look  for  a  moment 
at  its  nature  and  habits  through  the  eyes  of  a  man 
of  science.  Putting  under  the  lenses  of  a  powerful 
microscope  a  section  of  the  leaf  of  an  aquatic  plant 
peculiarly  adapted  to  disclose  the  protoplasmic  lite- 
current,  and  supposing  his  readers  to  be  g 
it  with  him,  a  scientific  professor*  says :  "You  be- 
hold a  series  of  cells.  Hut  through  the  thin  wall  of 
any  cell  appears  a  flowing  stream.  ...  A  very  river 
it  seems  as  it  rushes  on,  wave  after  wave,  up  from 
the  depths  below,  across  the  field  of  vision  and 
down  again,  over  and  over  or  round  and  round,  in 
ceaseless  rotation.  Now,  the  current  catches  in  its 
course  this  little  particle,  now  that,  hurling  each 
along,  now  up,  now  clown,  now  over,  now  under, 
without  weariness,  without  hindrance,  hour  after 
hour  before  us.  And  now,  as  the  stream  goes  on 
so  grandly,  think,  for  a  moment,  what  it  is  at  which 

*Prof.  T.  H.  McBride,  in  Popular  Science  Monthly,  July,  1882. 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  371 

we  gaze.  We  call  it  protoplasm ;  but  it  is  the  cur- 
rent of  life,  the  '  physical  basis  of  life,' —  the  com- 
mon bond  which  binds  in  one  the  whole  kingdom  of 
organic  things.  Think,  too,  of  the  antiquity  of  that 
stream,  of  its  lineage.  The  brook  that  '  goes  on  for- 
ever '  is  as  nothing  to  it ;  for  here  the  stream  has 
come  flowing  down  through  ages,  which  are  to  us  an 
eternity,  ever  since  life  began  on  earth.  The  moun- 
tains have  been  hoary  with  years,  and  have  dis- 
appeared beneath  the  level  of  the  all-producing  sea  ; 
but  this  stream  is  older  than  they.  Continents  have 
mown  old,  worn  out,  and  been  renewed,  rebuilt  from 
the  debris  of  this  same  stream,  and  life  has  again 
flooded  those  continents  ;  but  this  stream  is  older 
than  they.  ...  [In  the  interminable  past]  the  vast 
procession  of  life  begins,  rises  before  us,  spreads 
away  in  variety,  activity,  in  beauty,  in  wonderf ill- 
ness, incomprehensible."  Verily,  this  seems  like 
lifting  the  veil  in  the  Hebrew  temple,  behind  which 
was  conceived  to  be  imaged  the  Eternal  I  Am, —  the 
Being  that  was,  and  is,  and  is  to  be,  from  everlasting 
to  everlasting. 

And  so  we  might  go  on,  lifting  the  curtains  from 
this  familiar  life  all  about  us,  and  of  which  we  are 
ourselves  a  part  ;  and  on  every  side,  from  every 
nearest  or  remotest  or  obscurest  corner,  there  would 
be  revealed  to  us  the  same  ineffable  wonder  of  ac- 
tivity, of  order,  of  arrangement,  of  beauty,  of  power, 
in  the  great  and  in  the  little.  We  need  not  go  out- 
side of  the  sensible  universe  for  the  demonstration 
of  a  divine  glory  beyond  anything  and  everything 
that  the  theological  creeds  have  ever  been  able  to 
give  us  in  their  conceptions  of  Almighty  Being. 


TU  1 

h  we  tl  within   the   limit 

lible  dei  on,  there   is  something   within 

the  revelation  at  every  lifting  of  th<  phe« 

nomena  which  the  phenomena  the 
explain, —  something  which  the 
but  do  not  account  for.      1 
unrepealed.     We 

and  awed   before  it.  hut 

e  is  alw  i\  s  one  quest  ion  una'  I 

re  where  we  will,  up  her  i 

3    and   byways   in  wl 

shall  find  everywhere  the  •  •     .  the 

glory  ;  hut  behind  all  curtains  that  iwn  aside 

there   remains  one   inner  curtain  that  is  never  lifted. 

shows   us  the  wondrou 
taining  within  itself   the  pot  for   all   formi 

inization    and    life,  hat    • 

sin-  does  nol  dia 

e  formative,  guiding   principle  in  every  1 

organism  ;   hut    whence   and   what  the  vital) 
has    not    yet    explaine  I        Even      I    -he  prove  it  I 

chemical  force,  that  is  hut  a  ck.     She 

carries  us  hack  to  Force  it  a  primordial  ele- 

ment in  the  i  rnal  and 

imperishable,  remaining  one  and  the  same  amid  all  the 
changes  and  correlations  of   it  in  the  manifold  forces 
of  the  universe  ;    hut  she  has  not  told  US  how  we  are 
mceive  of  this  mighty  prin  rgy,  in  and  of 

what    it    consists,  or    what    the    philosophy  of   it- 
istence.      She    points    us  to   the   infinitesimal   nerve- 
cells  of  the  human  brain  where  this  wondrous  prima] 
'gy,  after  the  civilizing   discipline   of  millions  of 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  373 

generations  of  organic  existence,  sets  up  housed 
ing  as  a  rational  thinker  and  a  doer  of  righteous- 
But  how  the  connection  has  been  established 
between  the  nerve-cell  and  the  thought,  and  whether, 
with  the  dissolution  of  the  house,  the  housekeeper 
also  ceases  existence,  are  problems  which  science 
his  n«.t  solved.  She  bids  us  look  at  the  pi 
plasmic  current   in   its   -  >  3  flux  and  reflux,  and 

almost    promises    there    to    unlock    for    us  the   I 
mystery    of    the    secret    of    life.       Hut    whence    the 
lining,  what   the  cause  of  the   protoplasmic  cur- 
rent, she   has   made   no  revelation.      We  may  look  in 
and  see,  .is  behind  a  -e,  how  the  work  of   life 

j  on;   but  we  see  not  the  secret  power  that  starts 
it   and    sustains    it.      If   we    touch    with    a.needle  the 
wall  of  the  current  at  which  we  have  beei 
thinking  to  investig  *er,  instantly  "  the  charm 

i.s  broken,  the  mystic  river  c  flow,  the  tiny 
particles  settle  into  unbroken  peai  That  cell,  in 

fact,  on  which  we  gaze  is  then  dead,  while  all  the 
others  remain  alive;  and  so  the  curtain  falls  upon 
the  secret  unexplained.  So,  turn  whichever  way 
we   will,  back  of   the  bound''  ry  that  we  behold 

the  mystery  of  a  power  unrevealed. 
Shall    v.  'lien,  that  God  is  only  in  the  hidden 

mystery  ?  That  he  is  not  revealed  at  all,  bc« 
the  very  paths  which  are  lighted  for  us  by  the 
lead  us  finally  to  barriers  beyond  which  we  (.inn-: 
pass  nor  see?  That,  because  we  cannot  know  him 
wholly,  he  is,  therefore,  wholly  "  the  Unknowable  "  ? 
That  he  is  in  the  infinity  beyond  that  barrier,  but 
not  in  the  finite  beauty,  order,  power,  majesty,  good- 


574  TWENTY-FIVE    SERM 

,  love,  whose  source  we  have  traced  up  to  that 
line  ?  Nay  :  by  the  very  discovery  brought  to  us 
by  science,  that  all  force  or  energy  is  one  ami  self- 
persistent,  however  manifold  its  forms,  our  logical 
intellect  may  leap  that  barrier  to  unite  the  phenom- 
enal glories  on  the  hither  side  and  the  sovereign 
substance  of  being  unrevealed  beyond  in  the  insep- 
arable links  of  one  all-pervading  power  and  life. 
Life  infinite  and  life  finite  are  but  one  life.  As 
one  force,  one  law,  bind  together  and  penetrate  this 
common  earth  which  we  daily  tread  and  the  heavens 
into  whose  star-populated  depths  we  gaze,  but  which 
we  can  never  wholly  fathom,  so  is  this  whole  uni- 
verse of  our  senses  bound  to  and  pervaded  by  the 
unfathomable  sovereignty  of  being  that  escapes  all 
tests  which  our  senses  can  meet  or  our  science  devise. 
And  an  added  glory  comes  into  the  universe  of 
phenomena,  because  of  this  very  mystery  of  sov- 
ereign being  in  which  it  is  embosomed.  Our  world 
—  this  little  earth  —  takes  on  dignity  and  majesty 
from  the  infinity  of  things,  unseen  as  well  as  seen, 
of  which  it  is  a  part.  Imagination,  reason,  con- 
science, are  alike  spurred  to  finer  achievement  by 
the  problem  of  the  world's  relation  to  the  unseen 
Infinite  ;  while  the  heart  may  rest  serenely  upon  the 
confidence,  than  which  there  can  be  none  surer, 
that  its  destiny  is  linked  with  the  forces  which  make 
the  very  integrity  and  stability  of  the  universe  itself. 
As  to  what  is  in  the  mystery  behind  him  and  in  the 
mystery  before  him,  man  need  have  no  fears.  It  is 
enough  that  this  present  circuit  of  life  in  which  he 
shares,  and  which  is  flowing  out  of  the  mystery  of 


THE    GLORIOUS    GOD  375 

the  past  toward  the  mystery  of  the  future,  is  glo- 
rious with  intelligence  and  measured  by  advances  in 
moral  benefit. 

I  have  seen  a  child  in  its  mother's  lap  gaze 
up  with  a  sudden  wonderment  into  the  beaming 
benignity  of  the  mother  face  and  into  the  loving 
depths  of  the  mother  eyes,  as  if  its  infantile  mind 
had  just  caught  some  new  revelation  there  and  was 
trying  to  comprehend  the  fulness  of  its  meaning, — 
perhaps  stopping  in  the  midst  of  a  frolic  or  of  pain 
and  crying,  with  this  wondering,  searching,  upward 
look,  and  seeming  to  be  impressed  with  a  sense  of 
a  power  manifest  there  that  understood  all  and  could 
do  all  and  was  full  of  good  will ;  then  nestling  down 
closer  and  in  quiet  into  the  mother's  lap.  So  wc  are 
children  still  in  the  lap  of  our  mother  Nature.  And 
sometimes  we  are  hushed  into  a  tender  awe,  it  may 
be  in  the  midst  of  our  pains,  or  it  may  be  in  the 
midst  of  our  pleasures  or  our  work,  as  if  a  mysteri- 
ous, mightiful  power  were  bending  over  and  holding 
us.  We  lift  our  gaze  upward  to  see  not  only  that 
we  are  held  in  the  embrace  of  Law,  but  that  through 
Law  shines  the  glory  of  Love  ;  and,  at  that  answer, 
our  hearts  are  at  rest. 

April  22,  18S3. 


Note. —  This  discourse  was  given  first  in  March,  1882,  but  not  in 
the  completed  form  as  here  printed.  At  the  date  stated  above,  it 
was  delivered,  in  its  present  form,  before  the  "  Free  Religious  So- 
ciety" in  Providence,  R.I. ;  and  was  thus  redelivered  in  New  Bedford 
in  1884. 


XXV. 

A  TWENTY  FIVE  YEARS'  MINIST1 

::uth." 

•:         D 
twenty-five  ;  o  this  day,  and  hour,  I 

i  be  invested  with  the  ofl 
ami  minister  to  this  society.       Vh     I  eremonics  of   in- 
duction—  tho  member, 
for  the  frigid  inclemency  ol  the  weather      wen 
the  Bimple  form  common  to  the  must  lil 

■ 
pleted  the  contr  tt    ment  with  the  candi< 

whom  it  had  beard  and  - 
and  do  questioi  nis 

uir  pi  im  this  city  and  elsewhere,  some 

of  them  having  formerly  hem    cor  with  the 

ety,  who  conducted  the  services  in    i  way  that 

ed    both    the   natural    solemn  di  I    the 

occasion  and  the  spirit  of  cordial  •ill  and  . 

wship  that   should   exist   between    neighboring 
churches.      Having   thus  been  made    your 

minister,  I  preached  here  my  inaugural  discourse 
the  following  Sunday,  New  Year's  day  of   i860.     T  ■■ 

.  then,  we  exactly  complete  a  quarter  of  a  century 
of  lite  together  as  people  and  pastor. 


A     rWENTY-FIVE    YEARS     MINISTRY  \TJ 

A  quarter  of  a  century's  ministry, —  what  memo- 
ries press  upon  me  as  I  write  those  words!  Memo- 
ries that  almost  overwhelm  the  purpose  which  I 
have  in  mind  to-day  in  this  anniversary  discourse. 
In  these  years,  one  generation  has  nearly  gone,  and 
another  has  come.  Mingled  with  your  faces  as  you 
sit  here  this  mornii  .  I  e  another  congregation, 
more  numerous  than  that  which  usually  occupies 
these    seats, —  the    C  tion   of  our   risen    dead. 

They  take  no  room  anion-  us  ;  but,  through  my  mem- 
ory's eve,  I  see  the  space  between  these  walls  alive 
with  the  faces  of  this  benignant  company  of  our  de- 
parted membership.  But  into  this  field  of  reminis- 
e  I  can  hardly  trust  myself  to  enter.  Nor  do  I 
propose  to-day  to  take  up  any  time  with  the  statistics 

the  parish  and  of  parish  work.     The  numbei 
man  id  deaths  in  the  society  in  these  twenty- 

five  years,  the  changes  from  year  to  year  in  its  mem- 
hip,  the  condition    of   its   benevolent   agem 
the   State   of    its    Sunday-school,  the   advances  which 
may  'nave  been    made    in  the  external   equipments  of 
the  society  both  with   regard    to   its  Sunday  services 
and  its  benevolent  and  social  objects, —  all    thes< 
matters  of  a  certain   personal  and  parochial    interest, 
and  it  is   usually  expected    that   they  will   be  brought 
forward  in   anniversary  sermons.      On  previous  anni- 
versary occasions,   I  have  referred  to  these  points, 
and  at  times  somewhat  in  detail  ;  and  to-day,  tho 
we  have   no   boasts  to  make,  the  external   condition 
of  our  society  might  be  presented  in  a  way  of  which 
we  should  have  no  cause  to  be   ashamed.     But  my 
thought   presses  in   another  direction  at    this  time. 


}jS  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

One  remark  only  will  I  make  on  those  matters 
which  concern  our  external  prosperity  as  a  society, 
touching  merely  the  one  point  where  our  affairs  are 
the  least  promising, —  the  fact,  namely,  that  the  in- 
crease in  the  population  of  our  city  brings  little  or 
no  increase  to  our  numbers  here,  and  that  it  is  even 
doubtful  whether  the  gradual  passing  away  of  the 
old  families,  from  which  the  strength  of  this  society 
has  been  largely  drawn  for  the  past  sixty  years,  is 
made  good  by  their  descendants.  Even  with  regard 
to  this  one  point,  it  may  be  said  that,  counting  our 
morning  and  evening  services  together,  it  is  doubt- 
less true  that  the  services  of  this  church  during 
these  twenty-five  years  have  reached  and  are  still 
reaching  a  larger  number  of  persons  in  the  com- 
munity than  has  been  the  case  in  any  previous 
twenty-five  years  of  its  history.  And  so  long  as  the 
society  has  this  opportunity  and  can  wisely  use  it, 
there  is  no  pressing  cause  for  anxiety  concerning  the 
future. 

Leaving,  then,  these  externals,  let  me  proceed  to 
the  purpose  I  have  most  at  heart  on  this  occasion, 
which  is  to  trace,  in  a  measure,  the  more  interior 
development  of  my  ministry  among  you,  and  to  sum 
up,  in  pretty  definite  shape,  the  convictions  —  the 
articles  of  faith,  I  might  say  —  which  have  been  the 
substance  of  the  teachings  of  this  pulpit  during  this 
period.  I  say  "  the  substance  of  its  teachings  "  ;  for 
there  has  been  a  development  —  a  growth,  I  trust  — 
in  my  own  thought  within  this  time,  so  that  truth 
comes  to  me  in  somewhat  different  form  from  what 
it  did  when  my  ministry  began  ;  though  this  change, 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  379 

perhaps,  is  more  marked  in  respect  to  the  mode  of 
statement  than  in  respect  to  the  substance  of  the 
matter  stated.  In  some  particulars,  however,  my 
beliefs  have  undergone  a  change,— so  gradual  that 
possibly  it  may  not  have  been  noticed  by  my  hear- 
ers, yet  a  change  nevertheless,—  under  the  influence 
especially  of  the  widening  and  deepening  scientific 
thought  of  this  modern  era.  But  not  to  anticipate 
this  point,  to  which  I  shall  recur  by  and  by,  I  now 
ask  you  to  go  back  with  me  to  the  beginning  of  our 
work  here  together  ;  and  if,  talking  on  these  matters 
that  are  so  near  our  hearts,  I  make  unusual  use  of 
the  first  personal  pronoun,  you  will,  I  am  sure,  par- 
don the  offence  to-day. 

My  ministry  began  near  the  opening  pf  a  stirring- 
period  in  our  national  history.     In  that  last  week  of 

December,  1859,  when  wc  took  here  those  mutual 
vows  of  trust  and  fidelity  which  bound  us  together 
as  people  and  pastor,  the  country  was  flushed  with 
the  excitement  caused  by  John  Brown's  memorable 
expedition  into  Virginia.  That  hero's  life  had  just 
ended  on  a  Virginia  gallows  by  Virginia  law.  How- 
ever the  act  for  which  he  died  may  be  judged  in  the 
cold  court  of  the  prudent  understanding,  it  was  one 
of  those  deeds  of  chivalrous  heroism  which  always 
win  human  hearts  and  kindle  human  consciences  as 
with  coals  of  fire  from  heaven.  Even  Virginia's 
governor  was  compelled,  as  he  has  confessed,  to 
admire  the  character  of  the  man,  while  he  signed 
the  warrant  to  hang  him.  And  John  Brown,  dying 
on  that  Virginia  gallows  for  daring  to  confront 
human  law  and  human  constitutions  for  the  sake  of 


38O  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

the  slave,  became  the  sign  in  the  sky,  by  which  the 
two  hostile  and  warring  ideas  in  the  nation,  liberty 
and  slavery,  began  to  gather  and  align  their  respec- 
tive hosts  for  the  coming  conflict  of  arms.  Before 
the  first  year  of  my  ministry  was  finished,  in  the  ex- 
piring months  of  Buchanan's  administration,  with  the 
election  of  Abraham  Lincoln  as  his  successor  to  the 
Presidential  chair,  we  heard  the  ominous  rumblings 
of  the  earthquake  which  soon  came  in  the  terrific 
shock  of  civil  war,  with  its  vast  armies  of  national 
brothers  fighting  against  each  other,  and  its  four 
years  of  battles  and  carnage  and  sorrow.  And  then 
when  peace  came,  with  its  triumphal  decree  of 
emancipation  to  the  slave,  there  followed  the  still 
longer  and  more  anxious  period  of  reconstruction, 
culminating  in  the  final  triumph  of  the  ballot  and  of 
equal  rights  of  citizenship  before  the  law  to  black 
and  white  alike. 

During  these  two  eventful  periods,  my  ministry 
was  turned  largely  to  national  questions  by  an  in- 
ward force,  a  moral  compulsion,  which  I  could  no 
more  have  resisted  than  I  could  have  resisted  the 
sun  in  his  course.  From  the  first  day  to  the  last  in 
that  dreadful  contest,  this  pulpit  pronounced,  with  no 
uncertain  sound, —  and  oftener  than  was  agreeable, 
perhaps,  to  all  the  membership  of  the  society, —  not 
only  for  the  national  cause,  but  for  the  national 
cause  as  it  meant,  or  should  be  made  to  mean, 
liberty  and  justice  to  the  negro, —  equality  of  rights 
to  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  land.  And  there  is  no 
part  of  my  ministry  to  which  I  look  back  to-day  with 
more  satisfaction  than  to  this.     It  is  a  special  cause 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  38 1 

of  joy  to  me  now  to  recall  that  I  never  from  the  first 
had  the  slightest  question  as  to  what  were  the  prin- 
ciples which  the  pulpit  should  keep  paramount  in 
discussing  the  issues  of  the  great  conflict ;  that,  in 
the  very  first  discourse  I  gave  upon  the  matter, 
several  months  before  the  war  actually  broke  out, 
I  struck  the  key-note,  which  I  never  afterwards  lost, 
that,  as  slavery  was  the  cause  of  the  nation's  troubles 
and  perils,  so  emancipation  must  be  their  remedy  ; 
and  that,  again,  when  Fort  Sumter  was  attacked,  and 
President  Lincoln  called  upon  the  loyal  States  for 
troops,  and  the  northern  section  of  the  country  was 
in  that  Pentecostal  flood  of  enthusiasm  for  defending 
the  dishonored  flag,  when  many  warmly  patriotic 
souls  thought  it  injudicious  to  risk  disturbing  the 
sentiment  of  loyalty  to  the  Union  by  introducing  the 
issue  of  slavery, —  that  even  then  I  could  not  hesi- 
tate to  declare  that  the  one  thing  which  imperilled 
the  Union  was  slavery,  and  the  one  thing  which 
could  permanently  save  the  Union,  and  the  only 
thing  which  could  give  to  our  armies  a  cause  worth 
dying  for,  was  liberty  with  justice. 

I  do  not  recall  these  things  in  any  spirit  of  boast- 
ing. Far  from  it.  I  was  by  no  means  alone  in  such 
pulpit  work  ;  nor  did  I  have  much  to  do,  at  the  time, 
in  determining  my  course  by  reasoning  it  out  and 
nerving  my  will  to  it.  All  that  had  been  previ- 
ously done  for  me  in  my  education  and  moral  tem- 
perament. Rather  do  I  recall  this  part  of  my 
ministry  in  devout  gratitude  that  the  mighty  moral 
forces  which  were  then  surging  through  this  nation 
to  lift  it  to  a  higher  plane  of  righteousness  found 


382  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

and  used  me  as  their  instrument.  I  recall  it,  too, 
that  I  may  give  due  thanks  to  you  of  this  society  for 
the  untrammelled  freedom  you  gave  me  for  such 
utterances.  This  work  was  not  mine  alone.  We 
did  it  together.  You  gave  me  the  freedom,  and  I 
used  it.  On  no  other  terms  than  those  of  free 
expression,  as  ray  deepest  convictions  compelled, 
could  I  have  remained  your  minister.  But,  though 
my  discourses  on  these  themes  may  not  always  have 
been  in  accord  with  the  judgments  of  all  who  were 
in  the  pews,  never  did  I  receive  from  you  a  hint  or 
sign  that  you  wished  this  pulpit  to  be  other  than 
free.  Whatever  it  may  have  been  able  to  do  for  our 
country's  cause  during  this  eventful  period,  you 
shared  the  work. 

I  may  here  add  that  the  freedom  which  I  then 
used  in  speaking  in  this  place  on  matters  of  vital 
political  concern,  I  have  continued  to  use  whenever 
it  seemed  to  me  that,  in  pending  political  issues, 
questions  of  deep  moral  import  were  involved.  The 
ordinary  questions  on  which  political  parties  are  sep- 
arated have  their  appropriate  discussion  elsewhere, 
and  do  not  properly  belong  to  the  pulpit ;  though 
the  minister  as  a  citizen  should  have  his  views  on 
such  questions,  and  should  be  expected,  like  all  good 
citizens,  freely  to  act  upon  them  in  his  personal  ca- 
pacity. But,  whenever  political  issues  or  party  action 
distinctly  involve  ethical  questions  and  come  into  the 
domain  of  practical  morals,  then  the  pulpit  has  a 
legitimate  right  to  express  itself  on  such  issues  and 
action,  and  will  be  very  derelict  to  its  duty,  if  it  fail 
to  do  this.     It  is  a  very  delicate  and  difficult  duty 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  ^3 

with  which  the  preacher  is  thus  charged,  calling  for 
the  faculty  of  strict  mental  justice  and  for  entire 
freedom  from  the  spirit  of  partisanship.  He  should 
be  able  to  speak  in  such  a  way  that  his  hearers,  if 
they  can  listen  with  the  like  candor,  will  feel  that  it 
is  the  moral,  and  not  the  political  message  that  is 
dominant  in  his  mind.  It  is  in  this  way  and  spirit 
that  I  have  always  endeavored  to  approach  and  treat 
such  questions  here, —  with  what  success  it  is  not  for 
me  to  say. 

But,  I  think,  I  may  safely  say  that  the  freedom  of 
this  pulpit  for  a  wide  range  of  topics  has  been 
established  beyond  recall.  As  wide  as  are  the 
applications,  to  national,  social,  or  individual  con- 
duct of  the  fundamental  principles  of  justice,  hon- 
esty, purity,  humanity,  brotherhood,  so  wide  at  least 
must  be  the  freedom  of  any  pulpit  which  has  any 
good  reason  for  existence  in  this  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  On  this  ground,  I  have  been 
wont  to  consider  that  not  only  political  questions 
which  involve  moral  principle,  but  all  questions  of 
social  and  moral  reform,  are  fitting  themes  to  be 
treated  in  this  place.  Temperance,  justice  and 
equal  opportunity  to  woman,  the  treatment  of  crime 
and  criminals,  the  national  duty  to  the  Indians, 
social  purity,  marriage  and  divorce,  the  seculariza- 
tion of  government  and  of  the  public  schools  in  this 
country  as  a  matter  of  equal  rights  for  all  classes  of 
citizens,  the  better  reconciliation  of  the  interests 
of  labor  and  capital, —  these  and  any  other  themes 
pertaining  to  the  social  amelioration  and  elevation 
of  mankind,  I  have  been  accustomed  from  time  to 


384  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

time  to  bring  to  this  pulpit,  that  we  might  view  and 
weigh  them  here  from  the  stand-point  of  religion. 
The  religion,  indeed,  which  I  have  tried  through  all 
these  years  to  present  to  you  in  my  preaching 
covers  all  these  great  themes  and  objects  which  are 
so  vital  to  human  happiness  and  progress. 

Yet  there  is  a  popular  distinction  between  relig- 
ious themes  and  themes  pertaining  to  social  reform 
and  philanthropy ;  and,  at  this  point,  I  turn  to  survey 
those  beliefs  underlying  my  ministry,  which  by  this 
popular  usage  would  be  called  religious  beliefs.  And 
here  it  is  that  the  gradual  development  of  thought, 
involving  some  changes  of  opinion,  of  which  I  just 
now  spoke,  is  to  be  noted.  When  I  first  came  among 
you,  I  could  have  said  that  my  views  accorded  more 
nearly,  perhaps,  with  the  system  of  belief  which  had 
been  preached  by  Theodore  Parker  than  with  the 
views  of  any  other  representative  man.  That  is,  I 
discarded  the  supernatural,  the  prodigious,  the  mirac- 
ulous, as  evidence  of  religious  truth  or  attestation  of 
a  special  revelation  from  Deity,  and  accepted  religion 
as  only  a  natural  revelation  of  moral  and  spiritual 
truths.  Between  the  so-called  revealed  religions  and 
natural  religion  there  was,  to  my  mind,  no  distinction. 
All  religions  were  natural, — that  is,  were  the  natural 
unfoldment  and  ascension  of  the  human  mind  in  the 
discovery  of  ethical  and  spiritual  truth  ;  and  yet  all 
religions  so  far  as  they  possessed  any  truth  were 
revealed, —  that  is,  truth,  wherever  found  and  in 
whatever  religion,  was  from  Deity,  being  a  part  of 
his  very  nature.  Jesus  was  an  exceptionally  great 
religious  teacher  and  prophet,' but  a  natural,  finite, 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  385 

and  therefore  fallible  human  being.  It  was  only  his 
clear  and  extraordinary  insight  into  truth  that  gave 
him  authority,  and  not  any  special  credentials,  at- 
tested by  miracle-working,  which  were  given  him 
from  heaven.  Christianity,  historically,  was  a  devel- 
opment and  accretion  of  many  beliefs  and  forces, 
some  true,  some  false  ;  and  it  could  only  be  called 
the  absolute  religion  when  reduced  to  the  simple 
principles  taught  by  Jesus, —  love  to  God  and  man. 
Christianity  might,  however,  be  properly  thus  de- 
fined, and  thus  be  accepted  still  by  the  rational  mind 
as  synonymous  with  absolute  religion.  And  the 
three  primary  ideas  of  absolute  religion  —  God,  Duty, 
Immortality  —  were  to  be  regarded  as  given  by  direct 
natural  revelation  in  the  human  consciousness,  and 
hence  needed,  and  could  have,  no  stronger  attesta- 
tion of  their  truth  through  any  kind  of  outward 
evidence  addressed  to  the  senses.  This  is  a  brief, 
imperfect  schedule  of  the  leading  features  of  Theo- 
dore Parker's  theological  beliefs. 

And  this,  in  substance,  would  pretty  well  describe 
the  chief  points  of  my  theological  views  when  my 
ministry  began,  except  that  I  questioned  whether 
the  doctrine  of  immortality  could  be  philosophically 
said  to  rest  immediately  on  the  testimony  of  human 
consciousness  ;  whether  it  was  not  rather  a  logical 
inference  from  certain  facts  of  consciousness ;  and 
except  also  that  I  was  not  so  pronouncedly  theis'tic 
in  my  conception  of  Deity.  The  very  first  sermon 
I  ever  wrote,  and  one  of  the  earliest  I  gave  in  this 
pulpit,  was  criticised  by  our  professor  in  the  Theo- 
logical School  as  too  strongly  infused  with   Panthe- 


386  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

ism.  I  had  then,  as  I  have  always  had  since,  a  logi- 
cal difficulty  in  separating  Deity  from  the  living  law 
and  energies  of  the  universe  itself,  as  an  individual, 
self-existing  being,  who  might  be  conceived  as  exist- 
ing alone,  in  his  own  solitude,  though  there  were  no 
universe  at  all ;  for,  to  my  mind,  the  universe  itself 
was  infinite  in  its  range  and  life  and  possibilities  of 
power,  and,  hence,  to  conceive  of  God  as  a  separate 
infinite  entity  apart  from  it  required  the  logical 
impossibility  of  believing  in  two  infinite  beings. 
Therefore,  my  thought  tended  to  identify  Deity  with 
the  inmost  powers,  life,  and  development  of  the 
whole  possible  universe;  as,  in  some  sense,  the  soul, 
of  which  the  universe  was  the  body,  though  this 
comparison,  drawn  from  our  knowledge  of  finite 
organisms,  could  only  very  inadequately  and  imper- 
fectly express  the  actual  relation  between  Deity  and 
the  natural  universe.  In  his  essence,  Deity  must, 
indeed,  remain  uncomprehended  by  the  finite  mind, 
though  his  existence  and  power  must  be  necessarily 
assumed.  With  these  exceptions,  my  thought  at 
that  time  followed  pretty  nearly  in  the  line  of  Mr. 
Parker's  religious  views,  as  they  may  be  read  in  his 
books  to-day.  In  brief,  my  religious  philosophy  was 
that  of  the  New  England  Transcendentalists.  I 
believed  that  man  had  by  nature  an  intuitive  faculty 
by  which  the  great  religious  and  moral  truths  were 
self-evident  to  him.  These  truths  were  a  transcript 
in  the  human  mind  of  the  attributes  of  the  divine 
mind,  or  they  were  the  divine  nature  as  mirrored  in 
the  individual  human  soul.  And  to  this  philosophy 
I  was    predisposed    by  the  Quaker  doctrine  of    the 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  387 

Inner  Light,  to  which  I  had  been  bred  from  child- 
hood, and  which  I  may  even  say  I  possessed  by 
heredity  as  well  as  by  early  training. 

And,  now,  as  to  the  source  and  nature  of  the 
change  which  has  come  in  these  beliefs.  In  the 
year  1859,  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  was  published, 
—  that  epoch-making  book,  as  the  Germans  say. 
This  book  I  read  in  the  first  year  of  my  ministry. 
With  the  evolution  theory  of  creation  I  was  already 
acquainted,  and  in  a  general  way  accepted  it  as 
much  more  rational  and  credible  than  the  popular 
belief  in  special  creative  acts.  Several  years  before, 
I  had  read  that  little  book,  Vestiges  of  Creation, 
whose  authorship  was  not  discovered  until  last  year, 
when  William  Chambers,  the  veteran  *  Edinburgh 
author  and  publisher,  died.  Then  a  friend,  with 
whom  the  secret  had  been  deposited,  revealed  to  the 
world  that  William  Chambers  wrote  Vestiges  of  Cre- 
ation. That  publication  for  its  time,  though  now 
displaced  by  later  works  on  the  same  theme  written 
from  the  vantage-ground  of  wider  scientific  investi- 
gation, was  also  for  many  minds  an  epoch-making- 
book.  It  was  so  to  me.  From  that  time,  though  I 
saw  that  there  was  not  a  little  of  hypothesis  in  the 
development  theory,  as  it  was  styled  in  that  work, 
I  was  an  evolutionist,  in  the  sense  that  this  seemed 
to  me  much  the  more  probable  way  in  which  the 
various  organisms  and  species  of  life  had  come  into 
existence ;  while  my  mind  was  by  no  means  shut 
against  further  evidence,  nor  was  then  conscious  of 
all  the  logical  implications  of  the  evolution  doctrine. 
The  book  opened  to  me,  however,  a  new  earth  and 


TWENTY-FIV1     51 

new  heavens,  and  planted  in  my  thought  the  seeds 
of  a  grander  and  more  fruitful  conception  of  Deity 
than  any  which  I  had  found  in  the  old  tin 
Darwin's  famous  book  brought  the  further  evidence, 
gathered  so  carefully  and  from  such  wide  fields  of 
research  and  long-continued  study.  And  it  was  all 
confirmatory  of  the  development  theory  advanced  in 
the  older  book.  Other  contributions,  from  various 
authors,  rapidly  followed  on  the  same  theme  in  its 
different  branches. 

Soon,  it  became  evident  that  here  were  truths  of 
science,  which  would  profoundly  affect  the  intui- 
tional system  of  philosophy  as  it  had  been  applied  to 
religion.  Here  was  science,  not  only  going  behind 
instinct  in  the  animal  to  explain  it,  defining  it  as 
"  inherited  habit," —  the  habit  of  doing  certain  things 
having  been  formed  through  a  long  series  of  experi- 
ments in  natural  selection  to  find  the  conditions 
most  favorable  to  life, —  but  here  was  science  also 
going  behind  the  social  affections,  sympathies,  char- 
ities, and  even  conscience  in  the  human  soul,  and 
confidently  offering  similar  explanation  of  them. 
And,  if  this  explanation  were  true,  what  would 
become  of  that  idea  of  the  intuitive  philosophy  that 
these  human  benevolent  affections  and  the  moral 
sense,  or  conscience,  are  a  direct  impression  made 
by  the  divine  mind  upon  the  individual  human 
mind?  or  of  the  more  mvstical  idea  that,  when  these 
attributes  exist  in  specially  large  measure  in  any 
human  soul,  it  is  because  such  soul  is  specially 
open  and  receptive  to  a  direct  incoming  of  divine 
power,  as    from    a    personal    source    of    inspiration 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  389 

and  enlightenment  apart  from  its  own  organism  ? 
Through  the  pressure  of  questions  like  these,  I  was 
led  to  review  the  positions  of  the  intuitional  philoso- 
phy, especially  in  its  application  to  religious  truths, 
with  the  result  of  considerable  modification  in  my 
views.  I  saw  especially  that  the  old  idea,  a  favorite 
of  the  intuitional  school  of  thought,— that  the  divine 
mind,  as  a  present  personal  entity,  impresses  the  in- 
dividual human  mind  with  certain  qualities  of  affec- 
tion, or  inspires  it  with  certain  thoughts,  or  endows  it 
outright  at  birth  with  certain  mental  gifts, —  was  no 
longer  tenable.  I  saw  that  this  idea  of  a  commerce 
of  finite  minds  with  the  infinite  mind  through  the  air, 
.as  it  were,  without  the  medium  of  any  organism,  was 
really  a  relic  of  superstitious  faith  ;  and  that,  under 
the  figurative  language  of  God's  attributes  being  mir- 
rored in  the  human  soul,  or  being  impressed  upon  it 
from  some  entirely  external  source,  as  if  God  and 
man  stood  over  against  each  other  as  two  distinct 
personalities,  was  concealed  the  delusion  of  a  false 
philosophy. 

But  I  was  not  long  in  reaching  a  new  position, 
nor  was  there  any  serious  conflict  in  my  mind  be- 
tween the  new  and  old.  I  said  science  must  be  the 
criterion  for  testing  our  beliefs,  for  science  dis- 
covers the  facts  of  the  universe  ;  but  science,  ob- 
serve you,  only  in  its  actual  discoveries, —  not  sci- 
ence, merely  in  the  domain  of  the  material  world  and 
its  forces,  but  science  as  it  embraces  the  whole 
realm  of  facts  in  the  world  of  the  human  intellect 
and  heart,  and  in  all  phases  of  human  history.  A 
belief  or  a  sentiment   is  not  necessarily  to  be  dis- 


390  TWENTY-PH 

carded  because   science  fails  to  it.     I',   will 

ime  enough  to  disi  ird  it  when  rational  kno 
has  positively  shown  that   it   rests  on   error.     The 

circulation   of    the    blood  went    on    by   natural   law  in 
the  human  frame  before  Harve)  :red  the  true 

theory  of  it.      So  there  may  be   in  man's  mental  ami 
moral    organism    the    natural    e  rtain 

functions  called  spiritual  or  religious,  which  have 
hitherto  performed  their  service  t"i-  human  life  in 
connection  with  theories  of  them  wholly  erron< 
Hut  it  does  not  follow  that  the  functions  themse 
are  an  illegitimate  ami  artificial  excrescence  upon 
human  life.  They  may  he  as  nei  essary  to  tin-  higher 
moral  life  of  man  as  is  the  circulation  of  the  blood  to 
his  physical  life.  If  distinctly  proved  t<>  he  founded 
in  and  maintained  by  error,  then,  of  course,  they  are 
to  be  abandoned.  But,  until  then,  they  have  a  right 
to  stay,  with  the  presumption  that  they  have  a  legiti- 
mate cause;  and  the  true  explanation  of  them  may 
yet  be  found. 

With  regard  to  the  relation  between  man  and 
Deity,  these  scientific  truths  which  are  involved  in 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  only  compelled  me  to  recur 
more  definitely  to  that  pantheistic  conception  of 
Deity  which  the  Cambridge  professor  had  criticised, 
and  to  adjust  all  related  beliefs  and  the  language  for 
expressing  them  to  that  central  thought  of  the 
identity  and  oneness  of  Deity  with  the  living  law 
and  energies  of  the  universe  itself.  Instead  of  man 
being  connected  with  Deity  as  one  finite  person 
with  another,  the  two  communicating  in  some  mys- 
terious  way  through  the  intervening  spaces,  man  is 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  391 

connected  with  Deity  through  that  natural  organism 
of  his  own   faculties,  by  which   his  life   is   woven  in 
one  piece  with  the  life  of    the  world-forces   around 
him,  and  with  the  unfolding  order  of  the  forms  of 
being  and  life  anterior  to  him  for  countless  ages.     I 
have   found   no    science   which    dispenses    with    the 
necessity  of  a  causal   and  sustaining  power  whence 
all  beings  and  things  have  come  and  continue  ;  nor 
have  I  found   any  science  which  does  not  acknowl- 
edge that  man  is  in  necessary  vital  relation  with  this 
power,  whatever  it  may  be.     And  this  is  the  power 
which,  in   accordance   with   a   strictly  scientific  phi- 
losophy, wells    up    in    the    human  consciousness  as 
thought  and  moral  perception,  as  personal  will  and 
humane  sympathies.     Here,  therefore,  I' find  ample 
ground,  not  only  for  a  religious  philosophy  and  for 
religious  institutions,  but  also  for  all  that  was  most 
valuable  in  the   intuitional  philosophy,—  namely,  its 
assertion  of    divine    Power    and    Life    as  immanent 
in  human  life  ;  of  the  moral  sense  as  the  perception 
of  an  absolute  distinction  between  right  and  wrong  ; 
and   of  mind   as  the  dominant  element  in  the  evolu- 
tion of    the   world-forces,— or   of    mind,  instead    of 
matter,  as   riding  in   the  saddle  of  the  powers  that 
have  evolved  this  world  of    nature  and  man  which 
comes  under  our  knowledge.     Why  should  we  imag- 
ine the  divine  Power  to  be  brought  any  nearer  to  us 
or  to  be  any  more  real  to  our  thought,  if  we  con- 
ceive it  as  in   some  way  external  to  us  and  inspiring 
and  impressing  us  by  an  afflatus  from  the  skies,  than 
if    we    conceive  it   as   welling  up    within  us    as  the 
vitalizing  force  of  our  mental  and  moral  perceptions 


39-  ns  i  n  lv- 1-  p. 

and  the  very  power  thai  tins  us  within  to  fol- 

low the  true  and   to  do  the  humane  and  the  right  ? 

this  latter  view,  we  are  set,  indeed,  in  the 
current  of  the  divine  energy.  It  is  that  which  has 
created  our  mental,  moral,  affectional  organism, 
and  still  supplies  vitality  to  all  their  functions. 
The  mighty  Power  sweeps  in  and  through  us,  itself 
the    light    by  which  t    the    law  of   right- 

eousness which  command.,  our  service,  itself  the 
force  of  the  truth  and  beauty  which  impels  the 
ration  of  our  intellects  and  lifts  our  lives  to  noble 
aspiration  and  purpose  :  only,  in  the  exquisite  struct- 
ure of  this  organism  by  which  we  live,  we  are,  in  a 
measure,  free  to  ignore  and  resist  this  vital  influx 
and  upsurging  of  the  Eternal  Energy  in  which  our 
being  consists  ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  keep 
the  natural  channels  of  our  faculties  open  to  its 
ceaseless,   benignant   flow,   and    even    in  heir 

capacity,  and  thus  work  in  and  by  its  power  to  fulfil 
its  purposive  movement  in  the  gre  it  world-process. 
Further  study,  also,  of  Christianity  in  its  origin 
history,  and  by  comparison  with  other  religions, 
convinced  me  that  it  had  no  special  claim  to  be 
considered  as  synonymous  with  absolute  religion. 
I  saw  that  just  those  things  in  it  which  are  perma- 
nent and  make  it  acceptable  to  the  rational  mind  to- 
dav  are  the  mental  and  moral  perceptions  which  it 
holds  in  common  with  all  the  great  religions  of  the 
world  ;  while  those  beliefs,  and  particularly  that  of 
the  Messianic  authority  of  Jesus,  which  especially 
mark  it  as  a  distinct  religion,  are  the  beliefs  which 
the   rational   mind   to-day   questions   and   which   are 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS     MINISTRY  393 

transient  and  perishable.  The  conclusion  was  forced 
upon  me  that  it  is  presumption  and  arrogance  to 
claim  as  "  Christian  "  those  ideas  and  those  virtues 
and  graces  of  character  which  may  be  equally  found 
among  enlightened  believers  in  other  religions  than 
the  Christian  ;  and  I  came  to  the  conviction  that  the 
progress  of  humanity  would  now  be  greatly  aided, 
if  the  barriers  between  the  religions,  which  are  kept 
up  by  their  special  claims  and  names,  could  be  re- 
moved, and  people  from  various  faiths  should  be 
drawn  into  one  fellowship  on  the  basis  of  absolute 
liberty  of  thought,  of  pure  aspirations,  and  of  ear- 
nest endeavor  to  know  and  to  keep  the  law  of  right- 
eousness, recognizing  no  other  authority  than  that 
of  truth  itself.  I  believed  that  the  time  had  come 
for  distinctly  inculcating  these  ideas  ;  and  I  have, 
therefore,  during  the  larger  part  of  my  ministry 
given  myself  to  this  work,  here  and  elsewhere,  in 
connection  with  what  has  become  known  as  the 
Free  Religious  movement.  I  have  hoped  that  these 
ideas  would  gradually  permeate  the  minds  of  people, 
in  the  churches  and  outside  of  churches,  and  in  time 
organize  religion  on  natural  and  rational  grounds 
and  in  new  and  more  effective  forms  for  the  benefit 
of  humanity. 

And,  now,  let  me  briefly  draw  into  serial  form  the 
leading  articles  into  which  these  fundamental  princi- 
ples of  my  religious  faith  naturally  branch,  stating 
them  succinctly  without  argument,  the  argument 
having  been  given  from  time  to  time  for  these  many 
years.  The  statement  may  be  called  my  creed : 
mine,  though  not  necessarily  yours. 


}<  |4  T\\  I.N  1  Jf-FIVE    SERM 

i.  I  believe  in  God  as  the  power  eternal,  immortal, 

invisible,  omnipresent,  within  and  behind  all  phe- 
nomena, unknown  and  yet  known,  working  in  and 
through  nature,  producer  and  sustainer  of  all  forms 
of  existence,  vitalizer  of  all  organisms  and  life,  well- 
ing up  as  mental  and  moral  energy  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  man,  and  striving  in  the  development  oi 
human  history  to  establish  righteousness  as  the 
of  life  for  the  individual  and  for  the  race,  and  as  the 
surest,  amplest  providence  for  human  guidance. 

2.  I  believe  in  man  as  the  highest  consummation 
and  expression  of  the  eternal  energy  in  that  part  of 
the  universe  which  comes  within  our  knowle 
Beginning  on  the  level  of  animal  existence,  spring- 
ing from  the  lower  forms  of  life  that  were  anterior 
to  him,  I  believe  that  in  him  the  eternal  energy  has 
fashioned  such  an  organism  that  he  has  been  able  to 
rise  from  the  plane  of  animal  life,  through  the  vari- 
ous grades  of  savagery  and  barbarism,  until  he  has 
reached  the  heights  of  civilization,  enlightenment, 
and  power,  which  he  holds  to-day.  I  believe  that 
he  has  made  this  progress,  and  has  capacity  for  in- 
definite progress  in  the  future,  through  his  natural 
faculties  of  reason,  conscience,  and  affection,  which 
are  a  manifestation  in  him,  under  finite  limitations, 
of  the  eternal  energy  itself,  and  which  may  be  so 
vitalized  as  to  make  man  a  secondary  creator  in 
co-operating  with  and  carrying  forward  the  eternal 
world-purpose. 

3.  I  believe  that  the  moral  law,  or  conscience,  is 
man's  intuitive  perception  of  the  equation  of  rights 
between   human    beings    in   their  relations   to    each 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  395 

other.  I  believe  that  a  certain  stage  of  intelligence 
through  the  disciplines  of  experience  had  to  be 
reached  by  primitive  man  before  this  perception  be- 
came possible,  just  as  a  certain  degree  of  intelli- 
gence was  necessary  for  perceiving  the  relation  of 
numbers  in  the  multiplication-table  ;  but  that,  when 
this  degree  of  intelligence  was  reached,  the  percep- 
tion of  the  equation  of  rights  between  man  and  man 
would  follow  as  necessarily  as  the  perception  of 
the  relation  of  numbers.  I  believe,  therefore,  that 
morality  rests  on  as  permanent  and  irrefragable  a 
basis  as  does  the  science  of  mathematics. 

4.  I  believe  that  religion  is  the  expression  of 
man's  relation  to  the  universe  and  its  vital  powers, 
or  to  its  living,  sustaining  energy.  From'connection 
with  and  dependence  upon  this  energy,  it  is  not 
possible  for  man  to  escape.  The  fact  of  this  relation 
is  established  by  science  ;  and  science,  in  its  broad 
sense,  must  be  depended-  upon  to  give  the  true 
theory  of  it.  But,  in  all  ages,  man  has  been  con- 
scious of  it ;  and  his  expression  of  the  relation  has 
threefold  form,— through  thought,  through  feeling, 
and  through  action.  Through  one  or  another  or  all 
of  these  forms  of  expression,  he  has  sought  to  per- 
fect his  relation  to  the  universal  forces  and  laws. 
I  believe  that  from  this  fundamental  idea  have 
grown  all  the  special  religions,  while  their  dis- 
tinguishing beliefs  and  ceremonies  have  been  shaped 
by  the  intelligence  of  the  people  holding  them.  I 
believe,  therefore,  that  all  the  religions  have  a  natu- 
ral origin  and  a  natural  development  ;  that,  by  virtue 
of  their  common  root,  they  are  sects  of  one  universal 


396  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMl 

religion  ;  and  that,  notwithstanding  their  differen  es 
and  antagonisms,  resulting  from  their  special  doc- 
trines and  claims,  there  arc  among  them  certain 
underlying  unities  of  belief,  aspiration,  and  moral 
sentiment,  by  which  they  are  bound  together  in  one 
fellowship. 

5.  I  believe  that  the  sacred  books  of  the  various 
religions  have  the  same  natural  source, —  the  human 
mind,  in  its  effort  to  express  its  relation  to  the  infi- 
nite Power.  They  are  the  religious  literature  of  the 
race  or  people  producing  them.  Various  in  merit, 
they  all  contain  important  truths  ;  and  the  truths  in 
all  of  them  are  mingled  with  errors.  As  a  transcript 
of  what  humanity  has  thought  and  felt,  as  it  has 
struggled  with  the  great  problems  of  life,  they  are 
invaluable.  But  they  are  to  be  read  to-day,  not  as 
infallible  authority  for  truth,  but  with  that  discrim- 
ination which  can  separate  truth  from  error,  and 
find  refreshing  for  the  heart  and  moral  stimulus  for 
conduct  instead  of  a  creed  to  bind  upon  the  in- 
tellect. 

6.  I  believe  that  the  founders  and  prophets  of  the 
religions  were  human  beings,  of  superior  intellectual 
endowments  or  moral  insight  ;  holy  men  and  seers, 
who  became  the  natural  leaders  of  the-  people  about 
them,  and  around  whose  lives,  through  the  pious 
imagination  of  their  followers,  there  afterwards 
gathered  legends  and  myths,  to  express  the  people's 
wonder  and  admiration  for  their  greatness  and 
power.  I  believe  that  the  lustre  of  the  moral  exam- 
ple of  Jesus  is  not  dimmed  nor  the  power  of  his 
character   for    moral    inspiration    impaired    by    thus 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS'    MINISTRY  397 

placing  him  in  the  natural  line  of  humanity,  and  in 
a  group  of  kindred  souls,  who  have  lived,  wrought, 
and  died,  and  borne  brave  testimony  to  truth  and 
right,  for  the  guidance  and  healing  of  the  nations. 

7.  I  believe  that  reward  and  retribution  for  deeds 
done  in  the  body  are  assured  by  the  natural  law  that 
binds  effect  to  cause  ;  that  moral  error,  or  wicked- 
ness, produces  as  its  inevitable  consequence  pain 
and  wretchedness;  that,  if  continued,  it  is  suicidal 
in  its  agency,  and  tends  to  the  ultimate  destruction 
of  its  own  power ;  that  moral  good,  on  the  contrary, 
is  self-perpetuating,  and  leads  ever  more  and  more 
to  larger  and  higher  life,  to  realms  of  purer  happi- 
ness, and  to  ever  greatening  capacity  for  virtue  and 
for  virtue's  service.  « 

8.  I  believe  that,  on  the  ground  of  the  strongest 
and  most  rational  probability,  though  it  be  beyond 
the  realm  of  knowledge,  man  may  entertain  a  con- 
fident hope  —  nay,  a  faith  —  in  his  own  personal  im- 
mortality ;  that  the  eternal'  energy,  having  achieved 
self-consciousness  in  the  wonderful  personality  of 
human  character,  with  its  power  of  progressing  upon 
its  own  nature,  will  not  lightly  throw  away  such  a 
being  and  such  an  advantage  after  a  few  years  of 
earthly  life.  I  believe,  however,  that,  while  man 
may  entertain  this  hope  and  hold  this  faith,  his  first 
of  duties  is  not  to  dream  of  the  life  hereafter,  but  to 
work  zealously  for  the  amelioration  of  human  society 
on  earth ;  to  show  himself  less  anxious  about  saving 
his  own  soul  for  eternal  bliss  than  concerning  the 
salvation  of  other  souls  around  him  from  present 
ignorance,  wrong,  and   wretchedness,   so  that    they 


398  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

may  become  capable  of  intellectual,  moral,  and  spir- 
itual life. 

9.  I  believe  that,  as  God,  the  eternal  living  energy, 
is  ever  seeking  and  striving  to  embody  his  power 
more  and  more  in  man,  soliciting  him,  by  inward 
constraining  impulse,  to  truth,  goodness,  and  moral 
beauty,  so  also  may  man  correspondingly  seek  and 
find  God  ;  for 

"  God  is  seen  God 
In  the  star,  in  the  stone,  in  the  flesh,  in  the  soul,  and  the  clod. 
And,  thus  looking  within  and  around  me,  I  ever  renew 
(With  that  stoop  of  the  soul  which,  in  bending,  upraises  it  too) 
The  submission  of  man's  nothing-perfect  to  God's  all-complete, 
As,  by  each  new  obeisance  in  spirit,  I  climb  to  his  feet." 

10.  I  believe,  finally,  that  these  lines  of  Browning 
aptly  express  religion's  threefold  form  of  manifesta- 
tion, through  thought,  emotion,  and  conduct.  They 
hint  a  philosophy  of  Deity  and  man,  and  of  the  rela- 
tion between  them,  and  they  picture  the  emotional 
attitude  of  the  human  mind  in  all  genuine  worship 
and  prayer ;  as  also  the  brave  endeavor  and  deed 
that  are  necessary  to  bring  human  life  and  divine  law 
into  practical  harmony. 

Thus,  friends,  have  I  given  you  my  creed,  not,  of 
course,  to  impose  it  upon  you,  but  as  the  substance 
of  the  religious  philosophy  which  underlies  my 
ministry.  One  doctrine  implied  in  my  creed  is  that 
every  person  is  responsible  for  his  own, —  that  free- 
dom of  thought  is  both  a  right  and  a  duty  which  all 
human  beings  should  hold  sacred. 


A    TWENTY-FIVE    YEARS     MINISTRY  399 

But  higher  than  any  creed  is  the  deed.  Better 
than  any  other  kind  of  faith  is  the  faith  that  takes 
shape  in  pure  and  upright  character.  This  has 
been  my  constant  theme  through  all  the  years  of  my 
ministry.  It  has  sometimes  seemed  to  me  that, 
whatever  the  topic  I  treat,  my  sermons  always  come, 
in  the  practical  application  at  the  end,  to  this  one 
goal, —  cliaracter,  true  and  beneficent  character, —  this 
above  all  things,  this  forever  and  evermore.  But  is 
not  this  the  proper  goal, —  the  end  of  all  endeavor, 
of  all  aspiration,  of  all  living  ?  What  but  this  makes 
life  worth  living?  What  is  nobler,  what  fairer,  what 
more  beautiful  and  entrancing  than  the  life  of  a 
noble  soul  ?  O  friends,  if  my  ministrations  have 
led  any  of  you  in  these  years  to  see  this  ^truth  more 
clearly,  to  feel  it  more  deeply,  and  if  my  services 
have  thus  in  any  way  inspired  you  to  purer,  truer 
living,  I  ask  for  no  higher  satisfaction.  That,  and 
that  only,  is  the  measure  of  my  success.  My  first 
sermon  to  you  as  your  minister,  New  Year's  day, 
i860,  closed  with  these  words:  "If  I  can  lift  any 
souls  among  you  to  more  ennobling  truth,  to  purer 
love,  to  stronger  virtue,  if  I  can  quicken  your 
spiritual  vision,  and  lead  any  of  you  to  see  more 
clearly  the  infinite  beauty  of  a  life  proportioned  to 
the  laws  of  eternal  rectitude,  then  will  these  New 
Year's  vows  of  consecration  be  crowned  indeed  with 
blessing,  being  followed  in  due  season  by  seed-time 
showers  and  hopes,  maturing  summer  suns,  and 
autumn  harvests  of  ripened  souls."  Dear  friends, 
if  my  ministry  has  been  in  any  measure  instru- 
mental in  doing  for  any  of  you  such  a  service  as  I 


400  TWENTY-FIVE    SERMONS 

here  pictured  in  my  hope,  or  if  I  was  permitted  to 
do  it  for  an}-  of  that  congregation  of  our  risen  dead, 
our  "cloud  of  witnesses,"  who  have  joined 

"  the  choir  invisible, 
Whose  music  is  the  gladness  of  the  world," 

then  indeed  will  the  young  man's  vow  of  consecra- 
tion, twenty-five  years  ago,  have  been  lifted,  to 
become  to-day  my  manhood's  crown  of  rejoicing. 

December  28,  1884. 


APPENDIX. 


LETTER    TO    MR.    POTTER. 

Dear  Mr.  Potter, —  Many  friends  desire  the  publication  of 
a  selection  of  your  sermons,  and  they  ask  that  the  volume  may 
contain  such  as  you  may  choose  from  those  you  have  given 
from  our  pulpit  during  the  quarter  of  a  century  you  have  been 
settled  over  the  First  Congregational  Society  of  New  Bedford. 

They  also  ask  that  an  engraved  portrait  of  yourself  with 
your  autograph  be  bound  in  the  volume,  and  that  the  account 
of  the  Reception  on  your  twenty-fifth  anniversary,  including 
the  addresses,  as  published  in  the  papers  of  the  day,  be 
annexed.  Your  friends  wish  to  make  this  volume  a  part  of 
that  celebration,  and  a  permanent  memorial  of  the  value  to 
them  of  your  twenty-five  years'  service  and  of  the  gratitude 
they  feel  toward  you  as  pastor  and  preacher. 

Will  you  kindly  attend  to  the  compiling  of  this  volume,  in 
such  form  as  you  may  deem  best,  and  thus  gratify  this  general 
desire  ? 

In  behalf  of  these  many  friends, 

Cordially  and  faithfully  yours, 

S.  Griffitts  Morgan. 

New  Bedford,  1885. 


402  APPENDIX 

In  accordance  with  the  suggestion  in  the  foregoing  let- 
ter (to  which  this  book  is  the  answer),  the  matter  con- 
tained in  this  Appendix  is  added. 


A  Parish  Reception  was  given  to  Mr.  Potter  on  the 
evening  of  Dec.  29,  1884,  in  celebration  of  his  having 
completed  on  the  previous  day  twenty-five  years  of  service 
as  minister  of  the  First  Congregational  Society. 

At  the  opening  of  the  Reception,  the  following  hymn, 
written  for  the  occasion  by  Mr.  William  G.  Baker,  of  New 
York,  a  former  member  of  the  Society,  was  sung  by  the 
Sunday-school,  accompanied  by  the  presentation  to  the 
pastor  of  a  basket  of  roses  :  — 

A  sower  went  forth  sowing 
In  Eastern  fields  one  day, 
And  cast  in  lavish  handfuls 
The  seed  along  his  way. 
But,  ah  !  the  sun  was  burning, 
The  weeds  and  thorns  grew  fast : 
'Twas  only  in  the  "  good  ground  " 
The  seeds  sprang  up  at  last. 

Like  seeds  cast  by  the  sower 

Through  ev'ry  passing  year, 

Our  teacher's  words  have  fallen, 

That  still  we  love  to  hear. 

Our  hearts  shall  be  the  "good  ground  " 

Wherein  the  seeds  shall  spring, 

To  blossom  with  the  beauty 

Of  these  fresh  flowers  we  bring. 


APPENDIX  403 

After  social  greetings  by  the  Society  and  guests,  a  colla- 
tion, and  singing  by  the  choir  of  the  Society,  assisted  by  a 
chorus,  the  assembly  was  called  to  order  by  T.  M.  Stetson, 
Esq.,  who  spoke  as  follows  :  — 

ADDRESS    OF    THOMAS    M.    STETSON,    ESQ. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  and  Children  and  Grandchildren, — 

Do  you  know  that  in  this  Society  there  is  a  dread  and 
awful  power  ?  It  wears  the  garb  and  aspect  of  a  gracious 
lady,  but  its  decrees  are  more  imperious  and  absolute 
than  those  of  the  council  of  Venice.  It  has  decided  that 
in  this,  our  festival  —  and  nobody  can  organize  a  sym- 
posium better  than  Unitarian  ladies — there  shall  be 
speeches  instead  of  the  walnuts  and  the  wine.  I  told 
her  it  might  have  a  disastrous  and  centrifugal  effect  upon 
the  liables  (for  I  cannot  style  them  reliables)  of  the 
parish :  that  next  time  my  Brother  Crapo  would  have 
"  Alabama  claims "  in  Washington  requiring  immediate 
attention  ;  that  Judge  Prescott  would  drop  his  cane  and 
fly  off  to  Westford ;  that  Mr.  Rotch,  Mr.  Clifford,  the  new 
mayor,  and  myself  would  vanish  where  no  feminine  com- 
mittee could  find  us.  But  it  was  of  no  use  ;  and  I  am 
ordered  by  our  high  priestess  to  bring  Mr.  Potter  up 
here,  because  she  says  he  needs  to  be  spoken  to,: —  that 
this  is  no  ordinary  occasion, —  and  she  says  it  will  be 
only  seventy-five  years  more  for  the  completion  of  his 
centennial  service  with  us,  and  he  wants  to  know  what 
reply  we  have  to  make  for  his  twenty-five  years  of  preach- 


404  APPENDIX 

ing.  This  may  be  so.  I  once  read  a  sermon  of  the 
greatest  writer  that  ever  lived.  The  clergy  present  will 
at  once  know  that  I  mean  the  Rev.  Mr.  Tarbell,  of  Lin- 
coln, who  left  six  thousand  sermons,  each  equal  to  four- 
teen printed  pages  of  the  North  American  Review.  He 
said  that,  after  writing  some  four  or  five  thousand  of 
these,  the  saddest  doubts  came  to  him  whether  he  had 
not  survived  his  usefulness,  and  whether  the  earnest- 
ness and  bloom  and  fire  of  his  youth  had  not  departed 
and  left  no  substitute.  Perhaps  our  pastor  has  his 
periods  of  doubt  and  depression ;  and  I  presume  he 
would  like  to  know  what  record  his  ministry  has  made, 
not  merely  upon  sermons  docketed  and  filed  in  his  desk, 
but  in  his  parishioners'  minds  and  hearts. 

Let  us  tell  him  to-night. 

How  events  have  marched  since  you,  sir,  became  our 
minister !  How  you  have  been  interwoven  with  the 
dearest  associations  of  this  people  !  How  many  marriage 
ties  you  have  consecrated  !  Over  how  many  strong  men 
—  men  of  business,  of  affairs,  men  of  the  world,  men  of 
the  State  and  of  the  public  —  have  you  spoken  the  last 
benediction  of  faith  and  hope  !  How  many  gentle  women, 
too,  have  passed  away,  whose  lives  had  filled  their  homes 
with  joy;  not  of  the  world,  knowing  its  ills  and  woes 
only  through  their  sweet  charities,  living  afar  from  its 
tides  and  tempests,  and  seeing  in  their  stormy  waves  only 
the  deep  blue  of  heaven,  and  yet,  oh,  how  useful  in  God's 
scheme  for  human  welfare  and  felicity  ! 

What  tides  of  action  and  of  thought,  of  peace  and  war, 


APPENDIX  405 

have  swept  by  since  you,  a  youthful  acolyte,  stood  at  our 
temple's  gate,  with  your  priestly  brethren,  and  the  solemn 
invocation  went  up, — 

"  Since  thy  servant  now  hath  given 
Himself,  his  powers,  his  hopes,  his  youth 
To  the  great  cause  of  truth  and  heaven, 
Be  thou  his  guide,  O  God  of  truth !  " 

Our  right  hand  of  fellowship  was  given  you  then.  It 
need  not  be  given  again,  for  it  has  never  been  with- 
drawn ;  but,  to-night,  we  are  celebrating  your  silver  wed- 
ding to  this  church. 

What  a  congregation  it  was  when  you  undertook  the 
cure  of  souls,  and  especially  what  predecessors  you  had 
to  follow!  —  the  sturdy  old  logicians  and  expounders, 
Samuel  Hunt  and  Dr.  West ;  the  masculine  orators  of 
the  liberal  faith,  Dewey,  Peabody,  and  others  ;  Weiss,  a 
very  Chrysostom  of  the  modern  pulpit.  What  a  mantle 
fell  upon  you !  Nor  was  it  an  ordinary  society,  nor  of 
that  weak  mental  pliancy  which  can  be  easily  moulded 
by  any  able  divine.  It  contained  people  of  strong  and 
diverse  thoughts  and  methods  and  views.  What  a  history 
it  had,  too  !  The  Mercury,  usually  so  accurate,  erred  this 
morning  in  attributing  our  birthday  to  the  year  1795. 
Why,  our  first  minister  died  over  sixty  years  before  that. 
Nor  were  we  an  offshoot  of  the  meeting  at  Acushnet. 
We  were  the  whole  of  it :  we  were  the  "  Bedford  pre- 
cinct "  for  nearly  a  hundred  years  before  that  date,  and 
for  thirty  years    after,  too,   till  our    name    was   changed 


406  APPENDIX 

by  law  to  "The  First  Congregational  Society  in  New 
Bedford."  Nothing  happened  in  1795  excepting  the 
building  of  a  new  edifice.  Ours  is  the  oldest  legal  church 
organization  in  this  part  of  the  colony,  and  was  estab- 
lished to  be  a  bulwark  of  the  Protestant  faith  here,  and 
with  legal  powers  and  safeguards  that  would  startle  you 
to  hear.  It  had  legal  control  over  all  religious  affairs 
here,  and  over  all  men,  religious  and  irreligious  ones,  too. 
Its  powers  were  enormous.  Its  taxes  were  laid  on  every 
man  who  lived  in  the  precinct  territory, —  on  his  poll, 
his  lands  and  estate, —  and  this  was  collected  by  force  of 
law.  Every  stranger  who  came  here  was  taxed  in  the 
same  way,  irrespective  of  his  faith,  unless  he  could  get  a 
certificate  from  the  clerk  that  he  belonged  to  some  other 
church  approved  by  the  government.  Just  one  hundred 
years  ago  this  winter,  a  poor  Baptist,  who  had  but  one 
cow,  and  that  necessary  for  the  support  of  his  family,  in 
an  inclement  winter,  was  jailed  for  nine  solid  months 
because  he  would  not  give  up  that  cow  to  pay  a  minis- 
terial tax  to  our  society.  Those  were  the  days  when 
parish  funds  collected  easily.  The  sheriff  and  the  law 
did  it,  and  it  did  not  need  the  zeal  and  assiduity  of  any 
John  R.  Thornton  of  that  century  to  keep  the  parish 
treasury  full. 

And  if  the  town  or  precinct,  as  the  case  might  be,  was 
negligent,  and  did  not  provide  a  minister,  in  such  case  of 
a  "  defective  "  town  (mark  that  phrase  :  a  town  was 
"  defective,"  if  a  minister  was  lacking),  then  the  county 
court   stepped    in,   selected    a  minister,   and   saw  to    his 


APPENDIX  4O7 

installation  and  settlement.  Fancy  such  an  ordination  as 
that,  Mr.  Potter !  Instead  of  an  induction  into  our  pulpit 
by  the  grave  and  reverend  seniors  who  did  it,  fancy  it 
done  by  the  county  sheriff  and  his  mace  ! 

And  it  was  not  safe  in  those  elder  days  for  any  discon- 
tented subject  to  grumble  and  scold  improperly  about  the 
quality  of  the  preaching.  For  the  first  offence,  he  was 
"convented,"  —  whatever  that  may  be  I  don't  know,  but 
it  sounds  like  something  that  might  hurt.  For  the  second 
offence,  he  had  to  stand  on  a  block  four  feet  high.  Doubt- 
less, our  sweet  ancestors  of  Plymouth  colony  deemed  a 
block  four  feet  high  conducive  to  devotional  thoughts. 

No  rival  church  was  tolerated  here  in  our  early  period. 
If  any  man  set  up  such  without  the  consent  of  the  gov- 
ernment, he  lost  his  vote  in  town  meeting  and  had  to 
receive  such  other  punishment  as  the  court  should  inflict ; 
and  it  was  made  the  duty  of  the  county  court  to  purge 
out  such  as  were  "  perniciously  heterodox." 

The  future  of  the  church  was  also  provided  for  by  law. 
It  was  the  legal  duty  of  the  selectmen  of  the  town  to  see 
that  children  and  servants  were  made  to  understand  the 
grounds  of  Christianity,  so  far  as  "  necessary  to  salva- 
tion." This  was  a  grave  task  for  a  selectman  of  old 
Dartmouth  on  his  dollar  a  day. 

The  church  was  militant  then.  It  had  to  be.  The 
laws  provided  that  every  man  should  take  his  gun  to 
meeting  with  him  and  at  least  three  bullets.  The  same 
chapter  also  provided,  however,  that  he  should  not  shoot 
at  any  game  except  an  Indian  or  a  wolf. 


408  APPENDIX 

These  were  halcyon  days  for  the  clergy.  They  had  no 
rivals  to  fear  and  no  grumblers,  no  loss  of  parishioners 
and  no  bother  about  salary.  Before  you  came,  Mr.  Pot- 
ter, these,  our  lofty  prerogatives,  had  one  after  the  other 
vanished,  and  the  voluntary  system  prevailed.  That  had 
some  advantages,  though  I  remember  the  experience  of 
Rev.  Dr.  Barnes  when  it  began.  He  heard  that  his  flock 
were  assembled  in  parish  meeting,  and  were  talking  of 
increasing  his  salary  from  $300  to  $400.  He  seized  his 
hat,  hurried  to  the  meeting  and  begged  they  wouldn't ; 
for  he  said  it  was  as  much  as  he  could  do  to  collect  $300 
out  of  them. 

You  came  to  us  when  these  tremendous  safeguards  of 
the  law  had  ended.  Your  relation  to  us  and  ours  to  you 
had  to  stand  upon  its  merit  alone.  You  came  to  a  con- 
gregation of  various  views,  habits,  and  culture.  The 
elder  ones  were  strongly  attracted  to  the  ancient  faith 
and  the  ancient  ways ;  watchful  and  rather  suspicious 
of  all  novelties,  but  not  hostile  to  honest  inquiry  into  the 
records  of  revelation,  nor  into  the  infinite  and  unrecorded 
revelations  of  the  earth,  the  universe,  and  of  man's  own 
consciousness.  There  were  others  who  had  passed  into 
more  liberality  of  faith  —  possibly  some  might  deem,  had 
travelled  too  fast  or  too  far.  Observances  differed  too. 
Some,  after  a  week  of  figures  and  finance  on  wharf  or  at 
counting-house,  when  the  Sunday  came  hungered  and 
thirsted  after  righteousness  spoken ;  and  yet  others, 
raised  on  three  services  a  day,  a  Sunday-school,  mid-week 
meeting,  the  "  great  and  Thursday  lecture,"  the  perfunc- 


APPENDIX 


409 


tory  morning  and  evening  prayers  at  college,  where 
prayers  answer  the  purpose  of  the  military  reveille  and 
tattoo,  found  when  the  Sunday  came  that  physically  and 
mentally  they  needed  loneliness,  and  the  silences  of  the 
forest  and  shore,  and  in  the  very  stones  found  sermons. 

Yet,  whatever  our  differences  of  ways,  of  observances, 
of  creed  too,  your  ministration  has  united  us  in  a  deep 
satisfaction  when  Sunday  comes  that  you  are  at  the  helm 
and  that  our  beautiful  church  is  always  open  for  its 
appointed  work. 

All  Unitarians  have  one  thing  in  common.  We  do  like 
and  must  have  good  preaching.  We  always  have  had  it, — 
have  it  now  and  always  will  have  it, —  whether  we  hear  it 
from  you,  or  from  Dr.  Dexter,  who  has  occupied  our  pul- 
pit, or  from  Mr.  Julien  and  other  gentlemen  who  will  have 
an  attentive  and  appreciative  audience  when  they  do 
come. 

Possibly  some  outsiders,  knowing  as  little  as  outsiders 
ever  do  of  an  inside,  have  deemed  you  a  crank,  because, 
forsooth,  you  would  not  turn  any  accepted  crank,  and 
would  not  deem  that  all  the  truths  of  the  infinite  now  and 
hereafter  were  known  to  the  writers  who  have  preceded 
us.  You  have  promoted  inquiry  into  all  domains  of  re- 
ligious thought.  You  have  aided  thoughtful  people  in 
their  gropings,  questionings,  doubts,  and  darkness,  with 
an  inquiry  free  but  always  reverential  toward  the  faiths 
of  the  past,  always  deeply  reverential  toward  the  hero  of 
our  faith,  than  whom  even  the  most  expanded  culture 
and  incisive  thought  of  the  present  never  has  produced, 
depicted,  or  imagined  a  diviner  man. 


4IO  APPENDIX 

Yours  has  been  a  twenty-five  years  of  progress ;  and  we 
wish  to  say  now  —  not  in  mere  cordial  phrase  of  personal 
regard,  but  weighing  our  words  —  that  the  zeal  and  ear- 
nestness of  your  early  service  could  not  equal  in  interest 
to  us  the  zeal  and  earnestness  and  widening  scope  and 
more  comprehensive  insight  of  your  present.  Yours  has 
been  a  life  of  industry,  fidelity,  and  growth.  A  soldier  of 
the  Church,  you  have  never  slumbered  on  your  arms,  nor 
shrunk  behind  any  red-cross  shield,  but  have  met  the  ad- 
vance with  unprotected  breast.  You  have  not  taught  us 
that  religion  is  a  mere  means  for  personal  advantage, 
however  exalted,  nor  a  private  solace  or  balm  of  however 
lofty  a  nature.  You  have  never  based  your  instructions 
upon  the  selfishness  of  the  entoderm,  but  have  advocated 
reforms  of  every  kind,  and  with  all  the  care  and  prudence 
such  preaching  requires ;  and  by  that  I  do  not  mean  with 
faint  heart  or  half  speech, —  but  the  treatment  of  every 
reform  of  old  abuses  requires  a  care  commensurate  with 
the  limitless  importance  of  success.  Reforms  are  not 
altogether  lovely.  The  serpent  sheds  not  his  old  skin 
without  pain.  Reformers,  too,  are  not  always  and  alto- 
gether lovely.  They  are  spinous.  They  bristle  and  sting. 
We  have  never  found  the  unloveliness  of  the  typical  re- 
former in  you.  Your  many  sermons,  in  all  ways  and 
means  for  human  improvement,  have  pervaded,  imbued, 
and  permeated  us  like  the  gentle  dew  of  heaven.  Yes, 
—  to  use  the  phrase  of  your  own  journal, —  you  may  be 
our  ectoderm  to  your  heart's  content,  but  you  will  never 
be  an  echinoderm. 


APPENDIX  411 

How  well  it  attests  the  value  of  your  ministry  here  — 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  our  Society  is  by  no  means 
homogeneous,  and  includes  various  beliefs,  methods  of 
thought  and  culture  —  that  there  is  now  a  sterling  unity 
among  us  and  universal  assent  to  and  devotion  to  every 
serious  and  honest  inquiry  into  the  mysteries  of  life  and 
of  Deity,  and  that  we  are  one  shepherd  and  one  fold  ! 
Our  temple  has  been  no  place  for  discord.  Too  many 
prayers  of  tender  hope  have  shed  a  perfume  through  the 
place. 

And  now,  with  a  united  society  and  united  hearts  and 
with  all  signs  gracious  as  rainbows,  we  welcome  you  to 

the  second  quarter-century  of  your  ministry. 

« 

On  closing,  Mr.  Stetson  called  upon  Mr.  Crapo  for 
remarks. 

ADDRESS    OF    HON.  "WILLIAM    W.    CRAPO. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  :  — 

Twenty-five  years  is  not  a  long  period  in  the  lifetime  of 
our  church  parish.  Its  organization  dates  back  to  the 
early  days  of  the  settlement  of  the  town.  It  was  an 
influential  factor  in  the  religious  and  moral  development 
of  the  community  prior  to  the  Revolution.  It  has  a  his- 
tory, not  remarkable  simply  for  its  longevity,  but  for  the 
conspicuous  and  creditable  service  it  has  performed,  and 
for  the  marked  and  distinguished  men  who  have  pre- 
sided over  it  and  who  have  ministered  to  the  spiritual 
needs  of  its  people. 


412  APPENDIX 

We  will  not  discuss  the  wisdom  or  necessity  of  church 
organization.  For  the  development  of  truth,  in  the  effec- 
tive accomplishment  of  moral  growth  and  spiritual  cult- 
ure, it  is  requisite  that  there  be  co-operation  and  cohesion, 
unity  of  purpose  and  unity  of  action.  Some  go  farther, 
and  say  there  should  be  discipline,  even  if  forced  by 
compulsory  rules  and  arbitrary  regulations.  They  say 
that,  as  the  contentious  and  disagreeing  partner  in  busi- 
ness affairs,  that  as  the  impracticable  and  mugwump  in 
political  action,  are  elements  of  weakness,  so  in  like 
manner  the  dissenters  and  come-outers,  who  break  the 
ranks  of  established  church  organization  and  are  strag- 
glers along  the  edges,  impair  the  solidity  and  force  of  the 
assault  when  made  against  ignorance  and  error.  I  do 
not  undertake  to  weigh  in  the  balance  the  merits  of 
adherence  against  the  merits  of  independence.  Our 
fathers,  here  in  this  locality,  were  never  very  submissive 
to  church  rule.  They  were  free  thinkers  at  the  outset. 
They  believed  in  regulating  their  religious  exercises  and 
in  selecting  their  religious  teachers  according  to  their 
own  notion,  even  if  it  defied  an  act  of  the  General  Court. 
I  confess  I  have  always  had  an  admiration  for  the  early 
settlers  of  this  town  when  they  defiantly  declared,  in  the 
face  of  persecution,  that  they  would  have  for  themselves 
"perfect  liberty  in  all  matters  of  religious  concernment." 
Our  pastor  was  born  in  this  town  of  Dartmouth,*  where 
the  principle  was  boldly  asserted  and  successfully  main- 
tained.    This  principle  of   freest  thought  and  the  freest 

*  New  Bedford  was  once  a  part  of  the  original  township  of  Dartmouth. 


APPENDIX  413 

exercise  of  conscience  was  the  inheritance  confided  to 
him,  and  with  courage  and  fidelity  he  has  endeavored  to 
transmit  it.  Independence  of  thought  and  persistency 
in  maintaining  it  were  born  with  him.  What  more  nat- 
ural or  logical?  If  you  plant  an  acorn,  you  must  not 
expect  that  there  will  grow  from  it  a  bending,  shrinking, 
shivering  weeping  willow  or  an  aesthetic  sunflower. 

But  I  am  preaching  a  sermon,  which  is  a  very  improper 
thing  to  do  upon  an  occasion  of  festivity  and  congratula- 
tion. Let  me,  however,  add  one  suggestion.  When  it  is 
asserted  that  our  church  has  swung  away  from  the  moor- 
ings of  the  true  faith,  when  the  indictment  is  presented 
against,  us  by  the  religious  community  that  we  have  com- 
mitted or  are  committing  heresy,  and  it  is"  charged  our 
pastor  is  not  according  to  the  orthodox  pattern,  we  will 
answer  back  with  the  same  identical  words  which  our 
fathers  sent  from  the  Dartmouth  town-meeting,  in  1705, 
to  the  quarter  sessions  at  B'ristol :  "  We  understand  that 
our  town  is  presented  for  want  of  a  minister  accord- 
ing to  law.  To  which  we  answer  that  we  have  one 
qualified  as  the  law  directs, —  an  honest  man,  fearing 
God,  conscientious,  and  a  learned  minister,  able  to 
dispense  the  word  and  gospel  to  us." 

Such  a  man,  Mr.  President,  we  have  had  as  our  min- 
ister during  the  past  twenty-five  )Tears. 

The  history  of  the  First  Congregational  Society,  which 
is  our  parish  title,  shows  the  remarkable  concurrence 
and  harmony  which  have  existed  between  its  pastors  and 
congregation.     In  early  times,  Dr.  Samuel    West  was  its 


414  APPENDIX 

religious  teacher,  occupying  its  pulpit  from  1761  to  1803, 
forty-two  years.  It  is  said  of  him  that  he  was  a  man 
of  great  learning  and  equal  piety,  a  lover  of  disputation, 
and  vigorous  in  theological  argument.  I  do  not  doubt 
that  he  preached  political  sermons ;  for  he  was  an  active 
partisan,  and  rendered  zealous  service  in  promoting  the 
independence  of  his  country. 

Within  the  last  sixty-one  years,  we  have  had  four 
pastors.*  There  was  Dr.  Dewey,  who  instructed  this 
people  with  great  stores  of  knowledge,  and  with  profound, 
vigorous,  and  original  thought.  He  was  a  ripe  scholar,  a 
wise  teacher,  and  sound  religious  guide. 

Then  came  Ephraim  Peabody,  the  warm-hearted,  lov- 
able, companionable  man,  who,  with  great  good  sense  and 
a  strong  mind,  made  piety  to  grow  in  the  household  as 
well  as  in  the  church. 

After  him,  John  Weiss  was  for  many  years  our  min- 
ister, a  man  of  marvellous  brilliancy,  with  a  genius  and 
inspiration  which  seemed  heaven-born.  Bright,  piercing, 
far-sighted,  he  fascinated  and  captivated  us,  and  lifted  us 
heavenward. 

These  are  the  men  who,  in  the  past,  have  strengthened 
the  faith  of  this  people,  and  have  guided  them  to  a  higher, 
purer,  and  better  life. 

*  Only  the  longest  and  leading  pastorates  were  here  named.  But  the  society  has 
had  other  faithful  ministers  in  this  period.  The  now  venerable  John  H.  Morison,  D.D., 
was  a  colleague  with  Mr.  Peabody  for  several  years,  the  two  having  been  settled 
together  at  the  beginning  of  the  latter's  ministry.  Dr.  Morison  is  the  only  one  of 
Mr.  Potter's  predecessors  now  living.  Between  Mr.  Dewey  and  Mr.  Peabody,  Rev. 
Joseph  Angier  was  settled  as  pastor  for  about  two  years;  and  Rev.  Charles  Lowe 
was  settled  as  colleague  with  Mr.  Weiss  for  one  year. 


APPENDIX  415 

We  have  met  to-night  to  greet  our  friend,  who  is  their 
successor.  We  can  speak  freely  of  those  who  have 
finished  their  record.  But  I  find  it  difficult  to  express  — 
or,  rather,  I  find  it  difficult  to  refrain  from  expressing  — 
the  feelings  and  sentiments  of  this  grateful,  loving, 
and  admiring  audience,  when  speaking  of  our  pastor  in 
his  presence.  I  know  his  hatred  of  adulation,  his  con- 
tempt for  honeyed  words,  his  scorn  for  fine-spoken, 
fulsome  praises.  He  who  so  loves  the  truth  will  resent 
the  truth,  if  spoken  of  himself.  I  will  not  affront  him 
to-night  by  telling  you  in  his  hearing  of  his  virtues,  of 
the  work  he  has  done  for  us,  and  of  the  blessed  services 
he  has  rendered,  of  the  debt  we  owe  him,  and  of  the  love 
we  bear  him.  « 

Were  he  not  here  to-night,  I  could  speak  of  his  courage, 
—  that  intellectual  and  moral  courage  which  dares  to 
follow  convictions  wherever  they  may  lead,  that  shrinks 
from  no  encounter  with  the  -truth,  and  that  boldly  accepts 
the  result.  I  could  speak  of  his  integrity  of  thought, 
which  permits  no  evasion  nor  sophistry  nor  subterfuge, 
but  which,  with  inflexible  honesty  and  with  even  justice, 
seeks  to  find  the  pathway  to  eternal  right.  For  twenty- 
five  years,  with  high  character  and  upright  life,  he  has 
labored  with  us  and  for  us.  He  has  pleaded  for  recti- 
tude, for  loftiness  of  purpose,  for  exalted  purity,  and  for 
righteousness.  We  will  not  undertake  to  measure  his 
usefulness. 

Mr.  Potter,  we  have  asked  you  here  to-night  that  we 
may  thank  you  for  your  modest,  patient,  faithful  work. 


416  APPENDIX 

We  greet  you  with  warm  hearts.  With  cordial  good  will 
and  fellowship,  we  declare  our  gratitude,  our  esteem,  our 
affection.  We  congratulate  you,  not  simply  because  your 
pastoral  charge  of  twenty-five  years  remains  unbroken, 
but  because  of  its  duties  well  performed.  This  festival 
is  the  token  of  the  tenderness  of  our  sympathy  and  the 
loyalty  of  our  friendship.  We  wish  you  much  happiness 
and  long-continued  usefulness. 


Mr.  Potter's  remarks  in  response  were  entirely  extem- 
poraneous, and  only  a  meagre  report  of  them  was  made. 
On  being  summoned  to  the  platform,  he  said  that  he  had 
some  difficulty  in  keeping  a  consciousness  of  his  own 
identity  amid  such  novel  circumstances  and  facing  the 
addresses  to  which  he  had  just  listened.  After  seeing, 
indeed,  the  morning  paper,  with  its  purported  biograph- 
ical sketch,  sounding  so  much  like  an  obituary  notice,  he 
had  had  a  feeling  all  day  as  if  he  ought  not  to  be  around 
hearing  such  things ;  and  perhaps  it  was  for  this  reason 
that  the  few  thoughts  which  had  previously  come  to  his 
mind  as  proper  for  him  to  say  on  this  occasion,  should 
there  be  any  call,  had  slipped  irrecoverably  away.  He 
could,  however,  if  he  still  knew  his  own  heart,  say  that  he 
felt,  felt  deeply  —  far  more  than  he  could  express  —  a 
most  grateful  appreciation  of  all  the  kindness  which  had 
been  shown  in  these  utterances  and  in  all  the  arrange- 
ments of  the  occasion,  as  in  the  many  other  more  private 
ways  by  which  his  friends  had  been  revealing  their  hearts 


APPENDIX  417 

to  him  during  the  last  few  days.  But  he  wished,  too, 
that  this  might  not  be  wholly  an  occasion  for  mutual 
congratulations  over  the  past,  but  that  out  of  it  might 
come  new  consecration  and  new  strength  for  the  duties 
of  the  future ;  and  he  concluded  with  an  earnest  appeal 
to  the  Society,  which  he  meant  also  for  himself,  that  all 
should  stand  ready  to  seize  and  use  any  new  opportunities 
for  labor  in  behalf  of  the  good  of  the  community  which 
might  come  to  them  as  a  Society,  so  that  the  light  of  this 
church  of  their  fathers  should  not  only  continue  to  shine, 
but  should  shine  with  increasing  clearness  and  brightness, 
for  the  blessing  of  the  living,  the  honor  of  the  dead,  and 
the  good  of  generations  yet  to  come. 


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33  Potter  - 


5t 


Twenty-five 
sermons  of 


twenty-five 

years . 


BX 
7233 

P85t 


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